I was betrayed by the GOP after Jan. 6

For 1,095 days, right-wing Congress members have been telling me that I didn’t see what I saw on January 6, 2021. The GOP is whitewashing the American tragedy caused by Donald Trump before our eyes. 

In an effort to support Trump’s 2024 presidential bid, the Louisiana Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson recently released deceptively edited videotapes to the public, sparking condemnation from even his own party. Former GOP Illinois congressman Joe Walsh called it “aiding and abetting criminal activity.” Johnson demanded “transparency” while hypocritically blurring faces of January 6 rioters to protect them from the American justice system, pushing revisionist history. Trump and Johnson keep attempting to deceive the country with misinformation to prove the Jan. 6 rampage on the Capitol was a peaceful protest. It wasn’t. I was there — as the newly released footage of me shows. 

They used the images of me standing upright on the evening of January 6, after I’d been bludgeoned by rioters for six hours, to disprove my sworn testimony.  As a police officer defending the Capitol, I fought off the mob of Trump supporters in what resembled a medieval battle. I feared I’d lose my life, as five others did that day. Yet I kept showing up to work —shocked and on adrenaline – for weeks afterwards. In excruciating pain, I didn’t know the extent of multiple injuries I’d suffered. After doctors insisted I have X-rays and MRIs (whose results I released on social media) I learned I’d need two surgeries, one on my shoulder and another that left a metal plate with 8 screws in my foot. They’d both required months of  physical and mental therapy to treat my PTSD. It ruined my career. 

Speaker Mike Johnson witnessed firsthand the violent insurrection three years ago. Yet he still supports the former president who was indicted on 91 counts, including inciting the mob that stormed the Capitol and almost killed me.   If Trump is reelected, he’s vowed to give full pardons and a government apology to the rioters who attacked law enforcement officers like myself to stop the peaceful transfer of power.  

Mike Johnson knows the truth. On January 7, 2021, he went on the radio to describe the capitol riot as “a bad dream” and “chaotic scene” that unfolded as he was swiftly escorted into a secure area during the lockdown. “We heard gunshots and screaming…It was crazy, people were banging on the doors…” he said at the time, calling the president’s whipping the crowd into a frenzy and handling of the situation “terrible,” and expecting Trump to stop it.   

Then Johnson joined Trump’s minions in downplaying the siege to imply nothing bad happened.  To whom? These lawmakers went home to their families unharmed that night and to their white collar jobs the next day as Trump fled to his multi-million dollar Mar-a-Lago estate, while nine people lost their lives. Four of my brothers in blue were so damaged by what they experienced that they died by suicide, leaving widows and fatherless children. More than 700  riot participants  instructed by Trump to “fight like hell” to uphold his fraud were convicted of assault, battery, destruction and obstruction. Some are locked up with 20-year sentences. 

Trump’s henchman Rudy Giuliani was ordered to pay $148 million for doing his boss’s bidding in defaming election workers. Yet Trump has faced no consequences for inciting the riot.  The front-runner for the upcoming election, he’s being rewarded for it, emboldened by the members of his supposed “law and order” party who don’t care that he lawlessly endangered our liberty. 

Senator Minority Whip John Thune — who can be seen on the new tapes — criticized Trump,  tweeting on January 7 that the insurrection was “inexcusable” and “disgusting.” Now he insists that January 6 is “in the past,” as if we could easily move on.  But for those of us who stood our ground and did our job protecting our country, January 6 never ended.  There are hundreds of ongoing court cases where we’ve been called to testify, magnifying our traumas and injuries. 

Unlike Johnson, Thune and their lackeys, I never wavered about the violence I witnessed, as I told the FBI, district attorneys and January 6 Committee. Two brave Republican members — Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger —thanked me for protecting them that day.   They published an 845-page report holding Trump responsible for the riots, recommending criminal charges.  In it, I reported what I saw as one of 140 officers hurt by the armed mob, beating us with furniture, swords, flagpoles and using poisonous sprays.  

Following in most of his party’s feckless footsteps, Johnson took back the truth, acting as a Trump apologist and abettor.  Maryland Democratic Rep. Jaime Raskin called him “an insurrection esquire” and Republican Representative Ken Buck of Colorado called out his party’s hardliners, declaring that anyone saying the 2020 election was stolen or that the insurrectionists  didn’t commit crimes is “lying to America.” 

As an immigrant of color and U.S. Army veteran I worked for 16 years on the DC force, rising to Sergeant and passing the test for lieutenant. The wounds I sustained on January 6 meant I could no longer pass the physical tests for my job at 42. Yet after violating his duties, Trump is allowed to run for office again at 77, even if he’s found guilty of all crimes he’s accused of and put in jail. He pretends to be a loud supporter of the police — just not the officers who are suing him for the peril he put us in on January 6.  

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Johnson should release videos of my fellow officers defending the Capitol as elected officials like himself and Thune fled in fear. He should show our efforts to get U.S. representatives into secure rooms while we stayed, taking the blows to fend off Trump’s mob.  Since so many insurrectionists proudly filmed themselves, the world can see what Trump’s unscrupulous MAGA P.R. campaign seeks to hide. 

I’ll never forget how that day rioters called me a traitor and disgrace who should be executed. It’s infuriating to still hear some of the people I protected spewing conspiracy theories. They’ve referred to the rioters as Antifa, Black Lives Matter supporters, FBI agents, political prisoners or hostages, changing their story daily, distorting reality. 

If the truth sets you free, deception keeps you mired in chaos and darkness. Many officers like me lost our health and livelihoods enforcing laws that these immoral politicians keep violating. Instead of allowing us to heal, their subterfuge is further harming the Democracy they were elected to serve.  Three years later, the only moral coda for January 6 is to demand accountability, and follow Colorado and Maine’s court rulings banning Trump from running in 2024 under the Constitutional provision that disqualifies people who engaged in insurrection from holding public office. Trump should be prosecuted to the full extent of the laws that he desecrated. Otherwise, he’ll do it again.