Rep. Mondaire Jones Expected To Die as he Prepared To Battle Insurrectionists

Rep. Mondaire Jones Expected To Die as he Prepared To Battle Insurrectionists

2.16.2021

By Brendan Kennedy

On his fourth day in office, Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY) was on the House floor with Democratic Party leaders planning to certify the presidential election results, an ordinarily peaceful process. But then, everything changed when they were warned that there had been a breach and the insurrectionists were on their way.

“There was no confidence on my part that I would make it out of that room without having to encounter the domestic terrorists who sieged the Capitol,” Jones said on a recent episode of the Miranda Warnings podcast. “I was preparing along with Rep. Collin Allred from Texas, a former NFL player, to do battle in the event they were able to take the chamber.”

Congressman Jones talks in more detail about the insurrection at the Capitol, including the heroism of his colleague Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Az), a Marine, who assisted several members of Congress making sure their gasmasks were put on properly.

“Given the general failure of security at that time, Rep. Gallego deputized himself,” Jones said. “He instructed many of us on how to find our masks and properly put them on because none of us knew what we were doing.”

When the discussion turned to the actions of fellow freshman members of Congress, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Co) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga) and their objectionable behavior in the days before and after the insurrection, Jones didn’t hold back.

“I’m in the same hallway as Marjorie Taylor Greene,” Jones said. “I’m not going to move my office as others have, but people like her and Lauren Boebert who have shown no willingness to adhere to any common-sense rules that would protect the safety of members, staff, and all the people that work in the House of Representatives.”

Just days after recording, Jones voted along with 229 members of Congress to remove Greene from her committee assignments in the wake of recently unearthed incendiary and violent past statements.

He also discusses his leadership position in the Democratic caucus, the For The People Act, and his effort, along with Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Ca), to have Rudy Giuliani disbarred from the State of New York.

“Giuliani is a disgrace to the profession and someone that people throughout the Bar have been raising concerns about his conduct,” Jones said. “This is an example of how members of Congress can use their platforms outside of government to hold powerful people to account and improve our society and in this case, the legal profession.”

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