’This is how I am going to die’
Police officers testify about Capitol attack
WASHINGTON • The U.S. Capitol attack was like a “medieval battlefield,” police officers said, in emotional and sometimes angry testimony at a long-awaited Congressional hearing.
At the opening of a special House committee investigation into the events of Jan 6, four police officers described what happened when thousands of Donald Trump supporters stormed Congress.
They said they were called “traitors” by the mob and were attacked with hammers, their own shields, Tasers and even American flags.
Michael Fanone, one of the officers, described in agonizing detail how he was beaten unconscious by the rioters, who were intent on halting Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election.
As one rioter tried to pull his gun from its holster, the officer heard someone say: “Kill him with his own gun.”
Fanone directed his frustration at Trump and his Republican loyalists for “downplaying or outright denying” the severity of the attack.
“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 that bad,” Fanone said.
Slamming the table in anger, he added: “The indifference shown to my colleagues is disgraceful.”
Aquilino Gonell, another officer, cried as he told the panel how his family had desperately tried to reach him.
“What we were subjected to that day was like something from a medieval battlefield. We fought handto-hand and inch-by-inch to prevent an invasion of the Capitol by a violent mob intent on subverting our democratic process,” he said. “I recall thinking to myself this is how I’m going to die, defending this entrance.”
Liz Cheney, a vocal Trump critic and one of two Republicans on the nine-member committee, asked the officer how he felt about Trump calling his supporters a “loving crowd.”
“It’s upsetting. It’s a pathetic excuse for his behaviour, for something that he himself helped to create, this monstrosity. I’m still recovering from those ‘hugs and kisses’ that day,” Gonell said.
He dismissed a claim by Trump loyalists that hard-left agitators were behind the attack.
“It was nobody else. It was not Antifa, Black Lives matter, the FBI. It was his supporters that he sent to the Capitol that day,” he said.
“There was an attack carried out on Jan. 6, and a hit man sent them. I want you to get to the bottom of that,” Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn said.
More than 535 people now face criminal charges stemming from the riot, the worst violence at the Capitol since the British invasion in the War of 1812.
Cheney made clear that Trump’s role in the attack will be heavily scrutinized by the panel.
The panel was established by Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, last month after Republican senators blocked a move to create an independent bipartisan commission.
“We must also know what happened every minute of that day in the White House — every phone call, every conversation, every meeting leading up to, during and after the attack,” Cheney said as the hearing opened Tuesday.
However, the Republican leadership has maintained the inquiry is politically motivated.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to appoint two Trump-friendly Republicans to the committee — a decision that prompted House Republican leader Kevin Mccarthy to pull other GOP members from the panel.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, the other Republican on the committee, briefly lost his composure as he reminded the witnesses that despite their trauma, they ultimately prevailed in defending the seat of U.S. democracy.
“You guys may, individually, feel a little broken, but you guys won, you guys held,” he said, his voice breaking.
“Democracies are not defined by our bad days. We’re defined by how we come back from our bad days, how we take accountability for that. And for all the overheated rhetoric surrounding this committee, our mission is very simple: it’s to find the truth, and it’s to ensure accountability.”
A recent poll has found widespread unease among Republicans over the state of American democracy and the direction of the country.
Some 66 per cent continue to believe Biden was illegitimately elected and 33 per cent are also pessimistic about the Republican Party’s future, according to the AP/ NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research poll.