Trump pardons and protects Jan. 6th assailants
A disappointed police officer's response: ‘I have been betrayed by my country’
By Mike Sorrell
Washington, D.C. police officer Michael Fanone was off duty when he heard the U.S. Capitol was under attack by rioters on January 6, 2021, but he quickly put on his uniform and rushed to the scene.
He was on the marble steps, alongside U.S. Capitol Police and other D.C. officers, when many in the crowd of hundreds of rioters violently attacked the police, broke into the Capitol and vowed to stop the House of Representatives from certifying the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden.
The rioters supported Donald Trump, who they believed won the election because he told them he did. Trump, in a speech delivered nearby that day, told his MAGA faithful to go to the Capitol.
Six rioters dragged the 41-year-old Fanone down the steps, sprayed him with chemical irritants, beat him with pipes, stunned him with a Taser, and threatened him with his own gun.
He was one of more than 140 police officers injured that day. One died and four others later committed suicide. Fanone retired in late 2021 due to disability after about 20 years in law enforcement work, much of it spent chasing drug dealers on the streets of Washington, according to Wikipedia.
The U.S. Justice Department spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the past four years finding, prosecuting and jailing more than 1,500 of the Capitol rioters, including Fanone’s attackers.
On Monday night, a few hours after taking the oath of office and becoming president, Trump pardoned all of them except for 14 of the most violent, for whom he commuted their sentences,
Fanone learned of the pardons when a CNN producer contacted him at home. A production crew went there asked him for his reaction. Here is what Fanone said live on CNN:
I have been betrayed by my country. Rest assured I have been betrayed by my country, and I’ve been betrayed by those who supported Donald Trump, whether you voted for him because he promised these pardons or for some other reason, you knew this was coming. And here we are.
Tonight, six individuals who assaulted me as I did my job on January 6th, as did hundreds of other law enforcement officers, will now walk free. Six individuals who have threatened my life and who have made threats toward my family members, as well as countless other defendants who have threatened me because they see me as a spokesperson for law enforcement for this event.
My family, my children and myself are less safe today because of Donald Trump and his supporters. I’ve been concerned for myself and my family’s safety ever since I testified before Congress. If you remember, I didn’t even make it through my congressional testimony before I received my first death threat from a member of the American public who called me and threatened my life as I literally was giving testimony, and those threats have continued to this day, both against myself and members of my family in recent months.
My mother has been swatted. A 76-year-old woman who’s guilty of nothing other than having a son who was a police officer who responded to the Capitol on January 6th. And she has also had human feces thrown on her while she was raking leaves in her front yard.
This is who we are as a nation. This is what we’ve become, and it has been further exacerbated by Donald Trump.