'These People Are Looking For Us': Rep. Susan Wild Reflects On Impeachment, Insurrection

Hear our entire hour on the Senate impeachment trial verdict here.

While the verdict from President Trump's Senate impeachment trial is finalized, images of the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6 endure. One picture especially stands out: that of Rep. Susan Wild (D-Penn.), lying on her back in the house gallery, as Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) comforts her.

Other members of Congress had already evacuated from the House chamber. But those in the gallery, including Wild and Crow, were instructed to shelter in place.

Wild says that as rioters pounded on the doors, she managed to reach her adult children on FaceTime.

"They started to ask me questions, and I was trying to say, 'I’m OK. They’re going to evacuate us.' But I was in a crouched over position — they could see that," she says. "And then they could hear the gunshots, and the breaking glass and the pounding glass. I’ll never forget my son said, 'How can you say you’re OK? We can hear what’s going on.'"

Wild, Crow and other members of Congress hid on the floor of the House gallery for at least 25 minutes - until they fled to a safe room in the Capitol complex.

Wild remembers that Crow told his colleagues to take off their Congressional pins.

"That really hit me hard," she says. "I thought, 'Oh we’re supposed to be concealing ourselves — because these people are looking for us.'"

Wild was wearing her pin on a necklace, which she slipped off and put in her pocket. As she crawled toward a gallery exit to evacuate, she lost a shoe. She walked to the safe room barefoot.

Wild represents Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. She’s the first Democrat to represent the region in Congress in two decades. But she says her vote to impeach Donald Trump transcended partisanship.

"This was a major attack. And I’m not talking about me on a personal level," she says. "I’m talking about for our country."