About 20 angry Republican lawmakers stormed a secure room in the Capitol building basement where House Democrats were holding a secretive impeachment hearing.
The 20 conservative Republicans were given the green light to disrupt the meeting by their boss, the president of the United States, Donald Trump.
The meeting was being held in the U.S. Capitol basement on Wednesday, when 20 Republicans pushed past security guards and stormed into the room with cellphones – which are banned from restricted areas in the Capitol building.
The lawmakers refused to leave, prompting the Democrats to call the police to remove them.
A Pentagon official was giving testimony in the impeachment inquiry against President Trump when the GOP lawmakers barged in.
They staged a sit-in and ordered dozens of pizzas and Chick-fil-A delivered to the room. Disgusted Democrats streamed out of the room as the pizzas and Chick-fil-A sandwiches and cold beverages arrived on carts.
The pizza was delivered by Washington D.C.’s popular We, The Pizza shop, owned by former Top Chef contestant Spike Mendelsohn, whose website crashed on Wednesday and was still offline on Thursday morning.
The GOP lawmakers complained about the lack of transparency in the Democrats’ secretive meeting. They accused the Democrats of attempting an illegal coup to remove a sitting president from office.
The Democrats are anxious to impeach Trump ahead of the 2020 presidential elections.
Trump was pleased after viewing news footage of the lawmakers storming into the Democrats’ secret meeting. He told reporters that he approved of their planned standoff, according to White Houses sources who spoke with Bloomberg.
But Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who organized the unlawful disruption, denied speaking with Trump beforehand. “I led the effort and never discussed with POTUS,” he tweeted on Wednesday.
