Select committee on January 6th attack gets to work, hears testimony from police officers

This morn­ing, the Unit­ed States House Select Com­mit­tee on the Jan­u­ary 6th Attack held its first meet­ing, con­ven­ing to hear tes­ti­mo­ny from four police offi­cers who defend­ed the Capi­tol on that hor­rif­ic day almost sev­en months ago.

Chaired by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ben­nie Thomp­son of Mis­sis­sip­pi, the com­mit­tee con­sists of nine mem­bers: sev­en Democ­rats and two Repub­li­cans. The Democ­rats are Thomp­son, Adam Schiff, Zoe Lof­gren, Elaine Luria, Stephanie Mur­phy, Pete Aguilar, and Jamie Raskin; the Repub­li­cans are Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.

All were appoint­ed by Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi.

Top Repub­li­can Kevin McCarthy with­drew all five of his choic­es after Pelosi said no to seat­ing two out of the five, say­ing that Jim Jor­dan of Ohio and Jim Banks of Indi­ana were not appro­pri­ate choic­es to serve on the pan­el. Banks and Jor­dan are zeal­ous Trump boost­ers who stood ready to obstruct the com­mit­tee’s work.

McCarthy’s with­draw­al of his entire slate prompt­ed Pelosi to add Kinzinger to the pan­el. (Cheney, who was kicked out of House Repub­li­can lead­er­ship ear­li­er this year, had already been appoint­ed to the com­mit­tee as one of Pelosi’s ini­tial picks. She has become one of the high­est pro­file Repub­li­cans crit­i­ciz­ing Trump.)

All nine com­mit­tee mem­bers were on hand as Thomp­son gaveled the com­mit­tee to order and intro­duced its first wit­ness­es (descrip­tions are from Wikipedia):

• Daniel Hodges, Offi­cer, Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Depart­ment of the Dis­trict of Colum­bia. Dur­ing the attack. Hodges was crushed in a door­way between riot­ers and a police line. An indi­vid­ual has pled not guilty to assault­ing Hodges and grab­bing his gear.
• Michael Fanone, Offi­cer, Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Depart­ment. Dur­ing the Capi­tol attack, riot­ers pulled him into the crowd, beat him with a flag­pole, stole his badge and repeat­ed­ly tased him with his own Taser. They also went for his ser­vice gun. He sup­port­ed the cre­ation of the Jan­u­ary 6 com­mis­sion and crit­i­cized those who down­played the attack.
• Har­ry Dunn, Pri­vate First Class, U.S. Capi­tol Police. He has spo­ken about the racial abuse he and oth­er offi­cers expe­ri­enced dur­ing the attack. His lawyers respond­ed to Tuck­er Carl­son call­ing him an “angry, left-wing polit­i­cal activist”.
• Aquili­no Gonell, Sergeant, U.S. Capi­tol Police. He was beat­en with a flag­pole and chem­i­cal­ly sprayed.

Over the course of three and a half hours, the offi­cers told their hor­ri­fy­ing sto­ries, describ­ing the vio­lence abuse they suf­fered at the hands of Trump’s ter­ror­ist mob.

Here are a few excerpts from their testimonies.

Fanone:

I thought I had seen it all, many times over, yet what I wit­nessed and expe­ri­enced on Jan­u­ary 6th, 2021, was unlike any­thing I had ever seen, any­thing I had ever expe­ri­enced, or could have imag­ined in my coun­try. On that day I par­tic­i­pat­ed in the defense of the Unit­ed States Capi­tol from an armed mob… an armed mob of thou­sands deter­mined to get inside.

Because I was among the vast­ly out­num­bered group of law enforce­ment offi­cers pro­tect­ing the Capi­tol and the peo­ple inside it, I was grabbed, beat­en, tased, all while being called a trai­tor to my coun­try. I was at risk of being stripped of and killed with my own firearm as I heard chants of, kill him with his own gun.

I could still hear those words in my head today.

Dunn:

I wit­nessed the riot­ers using all kinds of weapons against offi­cers, includ­ing flag poles, met­al bike racks they had torn apart and var­i­ous kind of pro­jec­tiles. Offi­cers were being blood­ied in the fighting.

Many were scream­ing and many were blind­ed and cough­ing from chem­i­cal irri­tants being sprayed in their faces.

I gave decon­t­a­m­i­na­tion aid to as many offi­cers as i could, flush­ing their eyes with water to dilute the chem­i­cal irritants.

Gonell:

While i was at the low ter­race of the Capi­tol work­ing with my fel­low offi­cers to pre­vent the breach and restore order, the riot­ers called me trai­tor, a dis­grace and shout­ed that I — I, an Army vet­er­an and a police offi­cer, should be executed.

Some of the riot­ers had the audac­i­ty to tell me that it was noth­ing per­son­al, that they would go through me, through us, police offi­cers, to achieve their goal as they were break­ing met­al bar­ri­ers to use as weapons against us. They used more men­ac­ing language.

If you shoot us, we all have weapons, we will shoot back. Or, we will get our guns. We out­num­ber you, they say.

Hodges:

As we came close to the ter­ror­ist our line was divid­ed and we came under attack. A man attempt­ed to rip the baton from my hands and we wres­tled for control.

I retained my weapon. He yelled at me: “You’re on the wrong team.”

Cut off from my lead­er­ship, which is at the front of our for­ma­tion, we hud­dled up and assessed the threat sur­round­ing us. One man tried and failed to build a rap­port with me, shout­ing: “Are you my broth­er”? [and] anoth­er shout­ing: “You will die on your knees.”

If you can spare the time, the video of their tes­ti­mo­ny can be watched on demand here. These first­hand accounts are worth see­ing and hearing.

Lat­er on dur­ing the hear­ing, Dunn lament­ed that so many Repub­li­cans have sided with Trump and his destruc­tive, unpa­tri­ot­ic cult against the Unit­ed States Con­sti­tu­tion and the Amer­i­can people.

“Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are being laud­ed as coura­geous heroes,” Dunn said. “And while I agree with that notion, why? Because they told the truth? Why is telling the truth hard? I guess in this Amer­i­ca, it is.”

Dunn asked the com­mit­tee mem­bers to inves­ti­gate not only the peo­ple who car­ried out the attack on the Capi­tol, but also the peo­ple who ordered the hit, not­ing that they are just as respon­si­ble for the events of Jan­u­ary 6th as the peo­ple who smashed win­dows, beat offi­cers, and ran­sacked offices.

Dunn is cor­rect that even in an era of mis­in­for­ma­tion and dis­in­for­ma­tion, the truth still mat­ters. Trump and his enablers can­not be allowed to rewrite his­to­ry. If we can’t get to the bot­tom of what hap­pened and prop­er­ly con­front this threat of domes­tic ter­ror­ism, we will be set­ting the stage for this to hap­pen again.