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Why did AOC raid Nancy Pelosi's office? 2018 report resurfaces days after she recalls Capitol riot 'trauma'

Capitol Police had arrested more than 50 protesters on the occasion for unlawfully demonstrating outside the veteran lawmaker’s office in the Cannon House Office Building

New York Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is never far from controversies. The 31-year-old firebrand leader is not known for mincing her words and her controversial statements and attacking stances against the opposition have often seen her landing in hot water. The lawmaker has recently been vocal against the Republicans and right-wing supporters, particularly after the January 6 riots at the US Capitol, and her opponents have accused her of lying about her traumatic experience inside the Congress after the supporters of former president Donald Trump stormed the Capitol to protest the victory of President Joe Biden.

While the conservative camp has claimed that AOC was not even at the Capitol building when the attacks happened although she appeared on a live session on Instagram later to express the experience on the day that left her traumatized. She has also been accused of not condemning the Tacoma ICE center attack of 2019. It was alleged that AOC's controversial comparison of illegal detention centers to Nazi concentration camps where millions were killed had inspired Willem Van Spronsen, a reportedly Antifa member who carried out the attack. 

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And now, AOC’s critics have brought out an almost-three-year-old event in which more than 200 youth activists, flanked by AOC, entered the office of Nancy Pelosi, then the House minority leader, urging the Democratic leadership to act more decisively on the issue of climate change. Capitol Police had arrested more than 50 protesters on the occasion for unlawfully demonstrating outside the veteran lawmaker’s office in the Cannon House Office Building. AOC, who was yet to become a member of the House then, had left before the arrests were made and said she was there to support the demonstrators and encouraged Pelosi to listen to their demands.

Conservative outlet 100PercentFedUp.com on Thursday, February 4, carried a report in which it cited an old tweet from ABC News that showed AOC joining a sit-in held at Pelosi’s office and calling for initiatives to combat climate change. AOC, an incoming lawmaker then, was seen giving high fives to everyone present in the room and said: “I shared my story that my journey here started at Standing Rock and started with everyday people doing exactly what you all are doing standing with allies…because we don’t have a choice. We DO NOT have a choice.”

The conservative report also cited a couple of tweets that AOC, a socialist, made last December in which she suggested “that protests and occupations and anything that was necessary to make “folks uncomfortable” was acceptable”. 

The Associated Press, though, countered the claims that AOC was not at the Capitol during the January 6 riots saying they were false. It said in a report: “Ocasio-Cortez never claimed she was in the main Capitol building, nor did she claim she was face-to-face with a mob of violent rioters. In an Instagram Live video about the riots, she explained that she was in her office in a neighboring building on the Capitol complex, where she experienced a frightening encounter with a Capitol police officer who she said didn’t announce himself”.