Is a video of buses at the U.S. Capitol evidence of an operation against lawmakers? Does it show anything unexpected? No, that's not true: There's no publicly available evidence to support the idea that lawmakers were the target of a military operation. A National Guard official told Lead Stories that what's seen in the video would be consistent with a changing of shifts. More than 25,000 members of the National Guard were in Washington, D.C., around the inauguration of President Joe Biden.
The claim appeared in a video post (archived here) published on Rumble on January 26, 2021. The post, titled "Action At The Capital At 2am," read:
Buses and military descend on the Capital at 2 am and the Main Stream is nowhere to record the event
Users on social media saw this title, description and thumbnail:
Action At The Capital At 2am
Buses and military descend on the Capital at 2 am and the Main Stream is nowhere to record the event
The roughly 30-minute video showed nighttime activity outside the Capitol and included a nearly constant narration. The narrator made a number of unsubstantiated and baseless claims. Appearing to refer to lawmakers, he said at the start:
Seems like they're prepping to herd them all in. But they're not in the Capitol though, right? They're not in the Capitol building. Aren't they in their apartments or houses or condos or whatever they are? What could this be? I can't figure it out.
He added:
From what I understand, this is -- again -- this is called chatter because I only heard it online and I can't back it up with multiple sources, but this whole operation was set up to let them commit treason so they would certify an election that constitutionally cannot be certified. And all of the people that committed treason -- does anybody know how many indictments have been created?
First, some background is needed to understand the video, which appears to have been recorded on January 20, 2021, the morning of the inauguration.
Believers of QAnon, a conspiracy theory that claims Donald Trump is fighting an evil cabal of Democratic pedophiles, often speak of something called "the Storm." The Storm is supposedly the moment when Trump will expose the cabal and punish all those involved. Exactly how and when the Storm will unfold is a matter of great speculation within the QAnon community. Many thought it would happen before Biden took office, and the narrator seems to fall within that group. Toward the end of the video, he said:
Talk about a mass mobilization going on right now. I got a very good feeling that President Trump is knocking it out of the park ... I think we are witnessing America changing. I think what we are witnessing here is finally justice is going to prevail. President Trump has done it.
There's no publicly available evidence to support the idea that lawmakers were the target of a military operation and that Trump is in charge. Lead Stories has previously debunked a similar claim that the military was at the White House arresting Congress.
There were no mass arrests; the Storm did not materialize.
In fact, the video does not show anything bizarre or even unexpected. A National Guard official told Lead Stories that what's captured by the video would be consistent with a shift change. The official said:
I cannot validate what's actually being portrayed here, other than that it doesn't look to be anything out of the ordinary for changing of Guard rotations.
The official confirmed that the charter buses and vehicles seen in the video are the sort that sometimes carry military personnel. He said:
It's common when you don't have enough transport capability of your own to contract for additional resources.
The official stopped short of saying, 100%, that the video showed a shift change but expressed confidence that it did not capture anything untoward. He said:
I can't specifically say for certain -- because I can't validate where he filmed this and I can't validate who's in the buses, because I can't see if they're actually soldiers or other police personnel or other security personnel -- but it doesn't appear to be anything nefarious.
Although this fact-check does not include all of the claims contained within the video's narration, it's worth mentioning at least two more. The narrator said that "President Trump used the Insurrection Act" and that the "United States became a corporation." Lead Stories has debunked both of those allegations before. See our stories here and here.
