Peace Circle was staged on 1st Street Northwest, with the second set of fencing not far behind. Once Samsel breached the outer fencing, USCP officers, including Officer Edwards, moved from their posts to meet Samsel and other rioters.[85]
In less than a minute, at 12:54 p.m., the rioters pushed USCP officers to the ground, removed the fencing, and quickly stormed east towards the U.S. Capitol building.[86] Officer Edwards was thrown to the ground, causing her to hit her head on concrete steps.[87]
Two Proud Boys from New York, Dominic Pezzola and William Pepe, were among those leading the march to the next line of security barriers.[88] Pepe, an employee of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in upstate New York, took sick leave to travel to Washington for the January 6th events.[89] Pepe dragged part of the fence away at the next security barrier, ensuring that USCP officers were left defenseless.[90] The Proud Boys' actions were not spontaneous. Jeffrey Finley, a Proud Boys leader from West Virginia, later admitted "there appeared to be a coordinated effort to pull the barricades apart." [91] Proud Boy Jeremy Bertino admitted to similar facts when pleading guilty to seditious conspiracy, stating stated that he "believed . . . that the purpose of traveling to Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021, was to stop the certification of the Electoral College Vote, and that the MOSD leaders were willing to do whatever it would take, including using force against police and others, to achieve that objective." Based on discussions he and other Proud Boys leaders had in the leadup to January 6th, he "believed that storming the Capitol would achieve the group's goal of stopping Congress from certifying the Electoral College Vote. Bertino understood that storming the Capitol or its grounds would be illegal and would require using force against police or other government officials."[92]
Parallel to the Peace Circle, at the Garfield Circle walkway located at the southeast corner of the Capitol grounds, rioters breached the fencing at 12:55 p.m. and began rushing the West Plaza where they would converge with others from the Peace Circle.[93]
By 12:58 p.m., the crowd filled the lower West Plaza of the Capitol just below the inauguration stage that had been built for the ceremony scheduled two weeks later. After the initial breaches, the USCP was able to deploy enough officers to stop the rioters from advancing past the base of the inauguration stage. More importantly, rioter momentum was further halted when the first group of MPD officers arrived on scene at 1:11 p.m.,[94] almost precisely as President Trump finished his Ellipse speech. The MPD officers initially pushed back the rioters on the West Plaza, slowing them down before they would later breach the Capitol.[95]
