U.S. House of Representatives General Counsel Doug Letter said that on Jan. 6, 2021, he was fleeing congressional chambers just as a Capitol Police officer shot Ashli Babbitt.

And in his hands were a stack of binders. Letter had labored writing briefs opposing efforts by President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election, and he’d collected thousands of pages of notes and statements to give to Democratic state representatives when Republican-led states would announce their opposition to President-elect Joe Biden’s win.