The NPR Politics Podcast - Four Police Officers Detailed The Ugly Violence And Racism Of The Capitol Riot

Episode Date: July 27, 2021

The officers — Pfc. Harry Dunn and Sgt. Aquilino Gonell of the U.S. Capitol Police, and Michael Fanone and Daniel Hodges of the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department — testified before a congressional committee investigating the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol by Donald Trump's supporters. The officers each detailed brutal violence and abuse at the hand of protestors that left them with ongoing physical and mental injuries. This episode: White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe, congressional reporter Claudia Grisales, and justice correspondent Ryan Lucas.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. It is 2-17 on Tuesday, July 27th. Today was the first hearing of the House Committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump. It really centered on the testimony of four police officers who responded that day. First, there was Michael Fanone of D.C.'s Metropolitan Police. 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. And we heard from Aquilino Ganel of U.S. Capitol Police. I could feel myself losing oxygen and recall thinking to myself, this is how I'm going to die, defending this entrance. And Daniel Hodges of D.C.'s Metropolitan Police. It was for democracy. It was for the men and women of the House and Senate. It was for each other. And it was for the future of the country. And Harry Dunn of the U.S. Capitol Police. Democracy is bigger than any one person and any one party.

You all tried to disrupt democracy that day. You all failed. This was really emotional testimony. And it was also striking because you had these officers who were talking about the brutality that they faced on January 6th and the anger that was palpable, you could tell from them that their experience, they feel like it's being denied by certain members of Congress. So you saw a lot of pushback and very specific talk about the weapons that were used, whether they were homemade weapons or whatever people grabbed, how they were brutalizing the police, and the violence of that day, really. What stood out to you, Claudia, about what they were saying? It was that kind of emotional building up

throughout the hearing. It was like a tsunami at the end with, you could see the reactions from the members themselves, from adding Kingzinger of Illinois, this is the Republican, one of the two Republicans on the committee. But you guys won. You guys held. You know, democracies are not defined by our bad days. To Adam Schiff, the Democrat from California, kind of joked the two Adams were getting emotional today, but it was so touching. And this is part of the issue we've had in the House who say, you know, certain events didn't happen or downplaying what happened that day. And that's what was so different today was just this emotional buildup and delivering this message, if you will, of marching orders. As Representative Jamie Raskin said, you've given us marching orders

and you held the line and now we're going to hold the line. It just kind of gave them that charge to launch a whole new look at that day. And Ryan, when you were listening to them talk about, and they kept going back to this idea of weapons, because I guess there is a question, and we should be clear, there is a question of whether there were actual firearms out there with the rioters on that day. And none of the people on this panel, none of these four officers said that they saw actual firearms, but they seem to make the point that one, they may not know if someone had it in a book bag or whatever, but also that there were weapons, whether they were hockey sticks or, you know, chair legs or baseball bats, like that they were being hit with weapons, right?

They made abundantly clear in their testimony that while they may not have been fired at with guns on January 6th, they most certainly were attacked with weapons of one sort or another. Officer Gannell is one who kind of went through this laundry list of the sorts of makeshift weapons that were used against police. What types of weapons did you see used against your fellow officers? Police shields, police baton, the hammer, the sledgehammer that you saw on that video, flagpoles, tasers, pepper spray, bear spray, rebards, bats. But we also do know that there were weapons among some of the mob on that day because one, a gentleman by the name of Lonnie Kaufman from Alabama was arrested with weapons on his person as well as in his car. He has been charged with firearm defenses because of that.

And we also know that there were two pipe bombs that were planted near the Capitol on the eve of January 6th. We don't know how they tie into what later transpired. But we should never forget that there were weapons, among some in the crowd at least, that we know of. And that there were explosive devices planted to coincide with January 6th. And that was something that stood out to me because the officers, a number of them said that the fact that that pipe bomb had been found, that that was hanging over their head the entire time, and that they were thinking, well, whatever we do now, could that trigger some larger action? If we were to fire on the crowd, would that mean that there would be some larger response, like in explosives or things like that?

And I hadn't really thought about that before, how that might have hung over the heads of the officers that there were these pipe bombs that were found and they didn't know the scale of what was happening. And that's one of the things that I found really interesting about listening to this testimony today is I have covered the investigation. I'm on court hearings and detention hearings and have read through court papers of those who have been charged. But it's very different to hear from the people who were protecting the Capitol that day themselves, their firsthand experience, the visceralness of being stuck in a hallway as a mob tries to push its way through and you're caught in a door and someone's trying to gouge your eye out. That's a very different sort of thing to hear than it is to read dry court papers or hear lawyers talking. And I think that that was, to a large extent, the power of hearing from these officers today.

So we had two of the officers, Harry Dunn, who is Black, Aquilino Ganel, who is originally from Dominican Republic, but an American citizen. They talked about how they were attacked verbally in racial terms in very, very foul language. And Harry Dunn in particular talked about how he was cursed out and called the N-word over and over. One woman in a pink MAGA shirt yelled, you hear that, guys? This voted for Joe Biden. Then the crowd, perhaps around 20 people, joined in screaming, boo. No one had ever, ever called me a while wearing the uniform of a Capitol police officer. It also stood out to me that Daniel Hodges, a white police officer who was testifying, said, and he was the one that was crushed in the door, he said that the rioters kept trying to recruit him, that they, while they were saying horrible things to his colleagues of color, they were coming up to him

and even once said, are you my brother? That they were trying to convince him to get on their side. Yeah, that was very striking. I think it goes to kind of these contradictory stories we've heard from even former President Trump talking about a loving crowd and other Republicans, in some cases, erasing kind of the racial motivations we saw clearly on display that day. And we saw it in video. These are officers who were facing it right there display that day, and we saw it in video, these are officers who were facing it right there on that front line and hearing these abusive and derogatory terms used against them. And yes, Hodges just really kind of clarified how bad that was because they were talking to him as if he was one of their brothers and he was going to join them in arms. So, yeah, another tragic piece that we got to experience once again today.

All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll talk more about this in a second. Good question. That's a really good question. It's a great question. This is free therapy. Thank you for asking me that. God, that's such a good question. That's a great question. This is free therapy. Thank you for asking me that. God, that's such a good question. That's an interesting question. But what Fresh Air interviews are really about are the interesting answers. Listen and subscribe to Fresh Air from WHYY and NPR. And we're back. The officers who testify, like one thing that they came back to again and again, and they made it really personal, was this idea that they put their lives on the line for lawmakers, for every person in that there are lawmakers who are trying to rewrite history.

And Officer Fanone in particular made it very clear that he felt like it is disgraceful the way that some of these lawmakers are behaving. What makes the struggle harder and more painful 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 that bad. The indifference shown to my colleagues is disgraceful.

And there he was pounding on the table. What do you think, Claudia? You have these officers talking about the stakes, talking about democracy being at stake here. But you only have two Republicans on this panel, and they were chosen by Nancy Pelosi. They are not there with the support of the rest of the Republican Party in the House. What type of dynamic does that set up for this committee? You know, for the committee itself, it was pretty clear today they could just zero in on the themes of the stories that these officers wanted to share. So that came through much more clearly today. Had we had those other members on the panel, we might have heard a little bit more focus on Capitol Police and their oversight board and what was going on with the board.

What's interesting is they're increasingly, as I saw this morning with Republican leaders, including McCarthy, the theme was, well, what's the connection between that dot, the security failures, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi? She must play a role here is basically the direction that they're all pushing in. And they believe that the members on that panel, and this includes the two Republicans, Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, are basically only telling the story that Pelosi wants them to tell. Jim Jordan, this is one of the members, Republican member from Ohio who was pulled from the committee, went as far as joining McCarthy and calling these two Republicans Pelosi Republicans. So it just tells you kind of the direction they want to go in and also look into kind of the fragment you're seeing within the GOP still to this day over January 6th. Now, Cheney is one of the most conservative members

of the House. But what I found interesting is in her opening statement today, she had her eyes looking to the horizon and trying to determine as much as this special committee can about what went into January 6th. Here's a bit of what she said. 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. And what I found interesting about that is, one, it's very clear-eyed on what she wants to find out, which is a question that I think a lot of Americans have as well, but how that echoed what we heard at the end of the hearing from one of the officers, Michael Fanone, about what he

wants the committee members to look into. The time, the place, and the circumstances of that rally, that rhetoric, and those events, to me, leads in the direction of our president and other members, not only of Congress and the Senate, but that is what I am looking for, is an investigation into those actions and activities which may have resulted in the events of January 6th, and also whether or not there was collaboration between those members, their staff, and these terrorists. And you have the officers, Claudia, really honing in on this idea that there were people there that they saw, not saying everyone, but there were people there who were saying, we're here because we got our marching orders from President Trump.

We are here on Trump's orders. We are here for Trump. Yeah, it's really interesting in terms of all of the political calculations going into so many of these moments and the moves that we're seeing taken right now. For example, Liz Cheney has said that Kevin McCarthy himself should testify about his ties to Trump that day. And so this puts Republicans in a very tricky situation with this committee because there will be interest to hear from some of these Republicans like McCarthy, like Jim Jordan of Ohio, and learn what their role was that day and any connection they had to any Trump officials. And if that contributed to the issues that they experienced They're not part of the conversation. And that could be something that could backfire for Republicans who are boycotting because the focus is on these officers on the committee. And there could be frustration about being left out of the loop here. So what comes next? Like what what is next for this committee now that they've had this first hearing? Where do they go from here? So the next move is basically laying out for this committee the scope of the investigation. They do have some areas of focus they've already laid out. Adam Schiff, this is the Democrat from California, was telling reporters yesterday that they're narrowing down the scope of their

investigation. They're going to be looking at what Trump officials they want to talk to, what order they want to talk to them in, as well as gathering documents from relevant agencies and parties tied to January 6th and events preceding that. And they want to learn clearly what was shared that day by law enforcement agencies in terms of intelligence, what was not shared. They want to know what Trump officials knew or did not know. Look at the role of white nationalist groups and what kind of organizing built up to the attack that we saw on January 6th. And all along the way, Schiff is signaling an optimistic note. He feels they have a better shot at talking to these Trump officials under a Biden administration that he believes is going to be a much more understanding when it comes to getting help to talking to these witnesses.

All right. That's all the time we've got today. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.