In October 2024, several X posts went viral that claimed U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she feared being killed or raped when supporters of former U.S. President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But, according to the posts, those feelings were not justified because she allegedly was "not at the Capitol on January 6th."
Ocasio-Cortez did, in fact, say she thought she was going to be raped and killed during the Jan. 6 attack. Where was she located at the time? It was true she was not in the Capitol Building but rather inside her office in the nearby Cannon House Office Building when the rioters descended on the Capitol. Though that building is separate from the Capitol Building itself, it is part of the U.S. Capitol complex and was also evacuated by the Capitol Police.
AOC Told CNN She Thought She Was Going to Be Raped and Killed
On Aug. 9, 2021, Ocasio-Cortez sat down for an interview with CNN's Dana Bush and answered a line of questioning related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. During the interview — which is available on the CNN website — she said:
Ocasio-Cortez: I think one of the reasons that impact was doubled that day, is because of the misogyny and the racism that is so deeply rooted and animated that attack on the Capitol. White supremacy and patriarchy are very linked in a lot of ways. There's a lot of sexualizing of that violence. And I didn't think that I was just going to be killed, I thought other things were going to happen to me as well.
Bush: So what it sounds like you're telling me right now is that you didn't only think that you were going to die, you thought you were going to be raped.
Ocasio-Cortez: Yeah. Yeah, I thought I was.
In the same interview, she discussed being a survivor of sexual assault — something she has spoken about publicly on many occasions.
Was Ocasio-Cortez in the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021?
Critics of Ocasio-Cortez have long claimed she was not inside the Capitol when rioters breached security, and, because of that, she had lied. The reality is more complicated than that.
Firstly, there's no evidence of Ocasio-Cortez claiming she was inside the Capitol Building. She detailed her experience in an Instagram Live video that posted Feb. 1, 2021. In that clip, she said she was in her office in the Cannon House Office Building at the time of the attack. "Members of Congress, except for, you know, the speaker and other very, very high-ranking ones, don't actually work in a building with the dome," she said in the video. "There are buildings right next to the dome, and that's where our actual offices are."
The building where Ocasio-Cortez's office is located, the Cannon House Office Building, is connected to the primary Capitol Building via tunnels — which rioters were reportedly aware of and mentioned in some of their communications as a place for finding members of Congress.
Police ordered the Cannon House Office Building and other buildings in the Capitol complex to be evacuated as the insurrection unfolded.
There's no evidence Ocasio-Cortez encountered rioters face-to-face, and she has not claimed that happened.
According to the same Instagram Live video from February 2021, while in her office during the Jan. 6 attack, she said a Capitol Police officer entered her office after banging on her door. Ocasio-Cortez claimed he did not announce himself as an officer, did not have a partner and entered her office with hostility. For those reasons, she said she thought he was a rioter at first. Until she realized the man was a police officer and should follow his directions to evacuate to another building, she hid behind the door of her office's bathroom.
"As the Capitol complex was stormed and people were being killed, none of us knew in the moment what areas were compromised," Ocasio-Cortez posted on X.
Ocasio-Cortez was not the only member of Congress in the Cannon House Office Building on Jan. 6 who recalled being afraid and uncertain about what was happening. Rep. Nancy Mace — whose office was in the same hall (two doors down) as Ocasio-Cortez's — originally told The State, a local South Carolina paper, that she barricaded herself inside her office during the attack. "Fearing that Trump supporters she had seen staying at her hotel might target her after she voted to certify the electoral votes, Mace said she decided to sleep in her office that night," the article reads. (Later, Mace and Ocasio-Cortez publicly feuded over their different reactions to the Jan. 6 attack.)
Other members of Congress, many of whom were forced to take shelter in the primary Capitol building, have shared their experiences of that day, saying they also felt scared, unsafe and angry.
In sum, it's true Ocasio-Cortez was not in the actual Capitol Building during the Jan. 6 attack, though there's no evidence of her ever claiming to be there. She was in a nearby building, the Cannon House Office Building, which is connected to the primary Capitol Building through tunnels. It's also true that she said she feared being raped or killed during the attack.