‘Someone Opened the Doors From the Inside,’ Jan. 6 Defense Attorney Says

Kelly Meggs and other members of the Oath Keepers couldn’t have done one of the major things of which they’re accused by federal prosecutors: forcing their way into the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on Jan. 6, 2021, through the famous Columbus Doors, a defense attorney says.

The two sets of historic doors that lead into the Rotunda were opened by someone on the inside and not his client, according to defense attorney Jonathon Moseley. Department of Justice video widely circulated on Twitter shows a man trying to open the inner doors by leaning against them, before turning around as if listening to someone, then returning to the entrance and opening the left door for protesters.

“The outer doors cast from solid bronze would require a bazooka, an artillery shell, or C4 military-grade explosives to breach,” Moseley wrote in a letter to federal prosecutors. “That of course did not happen. You would sooner break into a bank vault than to break the bronze outer Columbus Doors.”

The 20,000-pound Columbus Doors that lead into the Rotunda on the east side of the Capitol are secured by magnetic locks that can only be opened from the inside by using a security code controlled by Capitol Police.

“Imagine how the prosecution will prove at trial what cannot be proven because it is not true,” Moseley wrote to prosecutors Jeffrey S. Nestler and Kathryn Leigh Rakoczy of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. “Who is going to testify that the defendants entered the Columbus Doors when the U.S. Capitol Police will begrudgingly testify that that is impossible and cannot be done?”

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