Only rarely are there moments during government hearings so emotionally powerful they will be remembered years afterward. The hearing last week of the House committee investigating the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6 to overthrow President Joe Biden’s election was filled with them.
The testimony of police officers fighting for their lives against angry Americans out to destroy democracy was riveting. Republican leaders in the House and Senate are making a big political mistake by refusing to participate in any investigation of the worst domestic terrorist attack in history. They’re foolish to believe they can pretend President Trump wasn’t responsible for the insurrectionists he sent to the Capitol. The events of January 6 were too horrific to be covered up by Republicans or forgotten by any decent Americans.
Here are some unforgettable moments from the testimony:
Officer Michael Fanone was dragged into the crowd of attackers. “I heard someone screaming, ‘I got one!’ As I was swarmed by a violent mob, they ripped off my badge . . . They seized ammunition that was secured to my body. They began to beat me with their fists and what felt like hard metal objects. I came face-to-face with an attacker who repeatedly lunged for me and attempted to remove my firearm. I heard chanting from some in the crowd, ‘Get his gun and kill him with his own gun!’. . . I was electrocuted again and again and again with a taser.”
Left for Dead
Eventually Fanone lost consciousness and was pulled from the mob by his partner who thought he was dead. Doctors said he suffered a heart attack, a concussion, a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“What makes the struggle harder and more painful,” Fanone said, “is to know so many of my fellow citizens, including so many of the people I put my life at risk to defend, are downplaying or outright denying what happened. I feel like I went to hell and back to protect them and the people in this room, but too many are now telling me that hell doesn’t exist or that hell actually wasn’t all that bad. The indifference shown to my colleagues is disgraceful!”
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Sgt. Aquilino Gonell immigrated as a child from the Dominican Republic. As a naturized citizen, he enlisted in the Army and was deployed to Iraq where he never feared for his life like he did at the hands of his fellow Americans on January 6. “The rioters called me a traitor, a disgrace and that I, an Army veteran and a police officer, should be executed.”
Officer Daniel Hodges screamed in pain as he was being crushed in a metal door by the rioters. “My arms were pinned and effectively useless . . . I was effectively defenseless. Directly in front of me, a man seized the opportunity of my vulnerability, grabbed the front of my gas mask, and used it to beat my head against the door.”
Lies and Racism
African American Officer Harry Dunn became the victim of two consistent features of Trump’s presidency, his constant stream of lies and his vile racism. Dunn was confronted by rioters who said they were invited by Trump to stop the steal because nobody voted for Biden. Dunn said he tried to keep politics out of policing, “but in this circumstance I responded ‘Well, I voted for Joe Biden. Does my vote not count? Am I nobody?’ That prompted a torrent of racial epithets. One woman in a pink MAGA shirt yelled, ‘You hear that, guys? This n***er voted for Joe Biden!’ Then the crowd, perhaps around 20 people, joined in screaming, ‘Boo, fucking n***er.’ No one had ever, ever called me a n***er wearing the uniform of a Capitol Police officer.”
Dunn was too busy protecting fellow officers to think about racism. Afterward he heard how common racial attacks on black and brown officers were. “I became very emotional and began yelling, ‘How the blank could something like this happen? Is this America?’ I began sobbing. Officers came over to console me.”
Congressman Adam Schiff, the former House impeachment manager, asked Dunn how he would answer the question, “Is this America? What you saw?”
“Frankly, I guess it is America,” Dunn said. “It shouldn’t be, but I guess that’s the way things are. I don’t condone it. It’s not the side of America that I like. It’s not the side any of us here represent. We represent the good side of America, the people that actually believe in decency, human decency.”
Trump’s presidency is over, but the angry public hatred he unleashed isn’t. Republicans call it “telling it like it is.” Later on CNN’s “Don Lemon Tonight,” Fanone played a voice mail he received while testifying filled with obscene, racist, homophobic expletives declaring: “I wish they would have killed all you scumbags.”
“This is what happens when people tell the truth in Trump’s America,” Fanone said.
