Val Demings Is on a Mission

All those years their parents spent risking their lives in uniform, the couple’s three adult sons, twins Antoine and Antonio, and Austin, never worried about Mom and Dad not coming home. Though death or injury were a constant possibility, Demings said they chose to dedicate their lives to public service and knew the risks. But, when they got home every night, “we took the uniform off, and then it’s like, ‘What we gon cook for dinner?’ We really tried to be just like any other family.”

January 6 changed all of that.

The night before the mob of Trumpists tried to overthrow democracy, some House members texted one another in their group chat, concerned. “Don’t underestimate, because many of them will see this as their last stand,” Demings replied at one point. As she arrived at the Capitol that Wednesday morning, she was surprised there wasn’t more law enforcement present. In the demonstrations she had worked during her time in uniform, she’d learned that a show of force often discourages unruly acts. “Like, if you wanna cut the fool here, don’t do it because we’re here with our helmets and riot gear on,” she said. “We’ve increased our authorized strength—don’t do it.”

Shortly after proceedings to certify Biden’s election win began, there was commotion outside the House gallery. Demings, sitting in the front row, flashed back to her days on the force. Instinct kicked in. She got up and stood guard by the door, arms crossed in front of her body.

Moments later, the sergeant at arms ran down the center aisle, repeating, “There’s been a breach!” When Demings heard breach, her mindset shifted. When there’s a demonstration, she told me, there’s an outer perimeter and an inner perimeter, and people might get through the outer perimeter, “but nobody gets through the inner perimeter. I knew if there had been a breach of the building, that the police had lost whatever battle they were in.”

Ruckus ensued. Glass started to break. Soon, the Capitol filled with eerie howls as the pack bounded down the halls. Capitol Police officers frantically pushed furniture against doors. Rioters pounded harder, trying to break through.

Capitol Police began evacuating the House floor. They told those in the gallery to “get down! Get your gas mask, because we might need to deploy gas,” Demings said, still flashing back. “And here I am, I’m thinking, Wait a minute, wait a minute. I spent 27 years on the streets of Orlando. I have chased people through backyards and alleys, and all those traffic stops—which can be the most dangerous because many times you don’t know who you’re stopping—and all those domestic violence calls, which are extremely dangerous, and I’m in the House of Representatives?”—her widened eyes stayed on me a beat longer, no blinks—“And I remember looking down at my waist.” No gun. “I never felt as vulnerable as I did that day, because on the street, you have all your weapons, you have your vest on, you’re prepared for that. I’m in the Capitol in my suit and my high heels.”

As the attack escalated, Representative Jason Crow—a fellow impeachment manager alongside Demings during Trump’s first trial—told everyone to take off their congressional pins. (He later told Demings they should’ve walked over to the GOP side.) Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester and Demings spread out on the floor next to each other. Gas masks on.

Rochester stared at Demings and said, “Val, what do you think is going to happen?”

“Lisa, I’m not sure what’s going to happen,” Demings told her, “but if we all died today, if we are who we say we are as a nation, if we are as big and bad as we say we are, then another group will just come in and certify these electoral ballots declaring Joe Biden as the president and Kamala Harris as the vice president. If America is as bad—if our spirit and determination is what I believe it is—they might stop us, but they can’t stop this process.” (She told me, point-blank, if she had to die that day, she was ready “because I went to a job every day where I knew that I might not go back home.”)

Demings then told Rochester to pray and remembered thinking: “The rest was like, it’s in God’s hands.”

The entire time, Jerry had been blowing up Demings’s phone. When he finally reached her, she was blazing up with anger. “I was reminding her, you’ve been through this stuff before,” Jerry said. “You can’t do your best thinking when you’re angry. You have to take control of the situation and think through it. But she was in police mode at that point on behalf of her colleagues who have never been in a high-risk situation, had never been shot at, and had never been in a shooting.”

Capitol Police finally escorted Demings and her colleagues to safety through a tunnel they’d never seen before.

Reflecting on that day after a campaign stop in Gainesville, she told me there’s an urgent need to safeguard democracy. “There’s always been a lot of focus on our adversaries around the world,” she said, “but in every oath that I’ve taken, it talks about ‘protect against all enemies, foreign and domestic.’ And I don’t believe that there is any foreign power out there that can take our country down. I think we can only do it from within.”