You know, there were just a lot of things that were not planned on many levels that were failures that day, that they spent, you know, a lot of time trying to fix.

And, you know, it was almost like a perfect storm of different failures, security-wise.

It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Michael Feinberg, a senior editor at Lawfare,

and I'm here today with Mary Claire Jelanek, the author of Storm at the Capitol in oral

history of January 6th. I mean, they're just over and over in testimony and interviews. They said,

you know, I thought this was it. Like, I thought, I thought that this, I might not come home that they said, you know, I thought this was it.

Like, I thought, I thought that this, I might not come home that day or, you know,

in a specific moment when they were on the ground or whatever it was.

A lot of them really thought that they were going to die in that moment.

Today, we're going to be talking about the research and writing of Mary Claire's book,

as well as her experiences herself from that day when she was actually in the capital.

This book is fairly topical as when this podcast airs.

We will be right at the fifth anniversary of the events on January 6th.

And with that in mind, I kind of want to begin with the definitional question.

What do we call what happened on January 6th?

Some people call it a riot. Some people call it an

insurrection. What do you think is the proper term we should apply to that day?

Well, I think at AP, we have used the term insurrection since it happened, but we often also call

it an attack. We don't use that word every

single time. I've written about it obviously a lot. I use all of those words interchangeably.

Attack, riot, siege. I think there's a lot of different things that you could call it. And,

you know, it was an attack on the Capitol. People broke into windows

...