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Editor’s Note: One hundred years ago today, Hollywood’s highest-paid film actor celebrated Labor Day dancing with perhaps its lowest-paid actress.

Those days, you could pay a dime to dance with any girl in the room. Fatty Arbuckle paid much, much more. The story of Tinseltown’s first celebrity trial, for his alleged rape and murder of that actress, is told here by lawyer Mark Phillips and his daughter, postdoctoral researcher Aryn Phillips, who last year in these pages wrote about the Charles Manson murders.

Both are retold from their book, “Trials of the Century.”

Arbuckle’s tale is told in two parts. This month: the accusation.

The French called it “The Crazy Years,” for the extraordinary social, economic and artistic changes that occurred.  The British called it “The Golden Age Twenties,” for its years of economic boom.  In America, it was “The Roaring Twenties,” and it was the decade in which the Twentieth Century came of age.  The Twenties brought peace and prosperity to most, and a sense of social evolution.  Charles Lindbergh piloted the Spirit of St. Louis from New York to Paris.  Baseball was America’s pastime and Babe Ruth its unquestioned king.  Prohibition in 1925 did little to slow the party atmosphere of Jazz, Flappers and excess, which roared unabated until the stock market crash of October, 1929.  And above all, America went to the movies.

In 1921, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was the highest paid film star in Hollywood. King of the two-reel comedies, he was beloved by millions for his pratfalls, his pie fights and his innocent, angelic smile. Studios churned his movies out by the score, and excited ticket buyers across the country stood in line to watch them.

But all that came to an end on September 5, 1921. Coming off a punishing year-long schedule of back-to-back filming, Arbuckle drove with friends to San Francisco for rest and relaxation over the Labor Day Weekend. Prohibition was in full swing, but liquor was available to those who could afford it, and Arbuckle certainly could. That weekend, after a drunken revel in his suite at the St. Francis Hotel, Arbuckle was wrongfully charged in the rape and death of bit-part actress Virginia Rappe. Rumors swirled of his callousness, brutishness and sexual deviation, none of it true. Caught in a firestorm of ambitious politicians, rapacious studio owners, social reformers and newspaper publishers, Arbuckle was tried in both the courts and the press. Three trials later he was acquitted, but the damage was done. He was blacklisted, financially ruined and one of the most reviled men in America.

Just thirty-four, his rise and fall in the world had been dizzying from every perspective. Born March 24, 1887, Arbuckle was one of five children in a poor farming family in Smith Center, Kansas. His father, William, presumed him to be the product of his wife’s infidelity, and in revenge and derision named him Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle, after controversial New York senator Roscoe Conkling, a power broker in the unconventional election of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876. Infamous as a womanizer and a philanderer, Conkling was notorious for an affair with Kate Chase Sprague, daughter of Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase and wife of William Sprague, U.S. senator and Governor of Rhode Island. According to popular rumor, in 1879 Sprague had surprised the couple and chased Conklin off his Narragansett estate with a shotgun.

Arbuckle’s movie success was neither chance nor favor, but rather the result of talent and many years of hard work. His family had packed up their few worldly goods and trekked west by 1892, living in a rundown home in Santa Ana, California. That winter, Arbuckle’s father walked out on the family. All of the Arbuckle children went to work, including Roscoe, then aged five. He dropped out of school at seven and began working in bars and vaudeville theaters until his mother’s death in 1899, when he was packed off to his father, then living in San Jose.

But his father never appeared at the station to pick him up. Twelve years old and with no family, friends or money, Arbuckle found a job at a local hotel as bell hop and janitor. He was big, even then 185 pounds, and people thought him older.

His first taste of show business came early. Arbuckle was in the habit of singing while he worked, and a hotel patron overheard him and invited him to perform in an amateur talent show at the Empire Theater in San Jose. The show consisted of the audience judging acts by clapping or jeering, with the worst of the performers pulled off stage by a large hook. Arbuckle’s singing did not impress the audience, and they screamed for his removal. Light on his feet despite his size, when he saw the hook emerge from the wings he avoided it by dodging and dancing, eventually somersaulting into the orchestra pit. The audience loved it, and that night Arbuckle not only won the competition but began a career in vaudeville.

In the spring of 1902, then fifteen, Arbuckle was offered a permanent job by David Grauman at his Unique Theater in San Jose, earning the then decent salary of $18 per week. Grauman, father of impresario Sid Grauman who would go on to build the opulent Chinese and Egyptian motion picture palaces in Hollywood, had followed Arbuckle’s local performances and had privately encouraged him to continue to hone his singing and dancing skills. Arbuckle stayed with Grauman nearly two years, opening each night’s show by singing, and filling in after with small acting parts. In 1904, Grauman moved Arbuckle to the Portola Café in San Francisco, which featured singing waiters and was evidently an improvement over small-town vaudeville. It was there that Grauman introduced Arbuckle to Alexander Pantages, the grand showman of the early twentieth century American stage, and the young singer soon joined Pantages’s traveling troupe.

What followed were several years of extensive touring, initially for Pantages but eventually on his own with ever changing acts and partners. His salary increased to $50 per week, and he was no longer required to clean and sweep between shows. Despite his size, Arbuckle was a talented performer, capable of broad slapstick physical humor, dancing and pratfalls. His humor and charm were popular with audiences. He played parts of every ethnicity and age. One night when the only female member of the troupe was nowhere to be found, Arbuckle went on in her place, dressed in her complete costume, wig and makeup. Weighing in at 250 pounds and in an outfit padded where appropriate, he brought the house down, and his female character became a standard. Re-teamed with Pantages, Arbuckle toured California, Canada, and Alaska.

In 1908, now married to fellow tour member Araminta “Minta” Durfee, Arbuckle took the acting company to El Paso, Texas, where the picnicking troupe found themselves surrounded one afternoon by soldiers of Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. Arbuckle and Villa introduced themselves, and in a moment of sublime historical mischance, began in fun throwing fruit pies at each other. When Arbuckle later introduced the gag in early films, the pie fight became a mainstay for him and scores of other comedians who adopted and perfected it.

Arbuckle began his film career with Selig Polyscope Company in July of 1909, appearing in Ben’s Kid. The one-reeler, lasting approximately ten minutes, earned Arbuckle five dollars. Movie actors were held in low regard in 1909, often barred from rooming houses and stores, and certainly not accepted into polite society. To act in films was considered by many an admission of failure as a stage performer, but Arbuckle needed the money to support himself and Minta. He worked sporadically for Selig until he finally landed a permanent job with Keystone Studios, the seminal early movie studio in Los Angeles founded by Mack Sennett. Between 1912 and 1917, many Hollywood stars got their start at Keystone, including Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Gloria Swanson, Mabel Normand and Harry Langdon. Sennett, the son of Irish Catholic Canadian farmers, had an unerring feel for comedy, and his Keystone Kops, anchored at one end by the sizable girth of Arbuckle, have entered the American lexicon as any group that mismanages its affairs despite an excess of energy and activity. So recognizable were the disaster-prone Kops with their tall, British helmets, that police departments throughout the United States quickly abandoned the headgear in favor of military-style officers’ caps.

By 1914, paired in films with actress Mabel Normand, Arbuckle moved to Paramount Pictures for the then unheard of offer of $1,000-a-day plus 25% of all profits and complete artistic control. The movies they made, primarily twenty-minute two-reelers, were so popular that Paramount signed Arbuckle to an unprecedented three-year, three million dollar contract which made him the highest paid movie actor of his age.

But by 1916, Arbuckle’s weight and heavy drinking were impacting his health. Then age thirty, he tipped the scales at more than 300 pounds. Wherever he went he was known as “Fatty” and that nickname appeared everywhere; in articles, movie posters and product promotions. But it was only a screen name, and Arbuckle never used it himself nor did his friends use it in conversation with him. He discouraged anyone from addressing him as “Fatty” off screen, and when they did his usual response was “I’ve got a name, you know.”

His marriage to Minta cooled and by 1916 they were separated, with Minta living in New York. Though Arbuckle certainly lived the life of a visible and highly paid motion picture actor, tales of a promiscuous and dissolute lifestyle are probably inaccurate. His much-discussed relationship with perennial co-star Mabel Normand was close but not sexual. She was involved in her own stormy relationship with Mack Sennett, and Arbuckle once saved her life by taking her to a hospital after she was struck in the head with a vase in a particularly nasty episode in the Sennett home. Within days of her release from the hospital Normand attempted to drown herself, and then spiraled into a life of drug addiction and abusive behavior. In 1922 she was implicated as a prime suspect in the murder of director William Desmond Taylor, one of the great scandals of its day. She contracted tuberculosis, her health rapidly declined, and she died ruined and unhappy at the age of thirty-five.

By the summer of 1921, Arbuckle was at the height of his success and popularity. His two-reel comedies played in every city and small town in America. He had paid the then enormous sum of $250,000 to purchase the Theda Bara mansion on West Adams Boulevard in Los Angeles, with another mansion for relaxation some twenty miles south on Ocean Avenue in Long Beach. Both homes were opulently furnished with antiques at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, mostly bought on credit. He entertained often, spent freely and saved nothing. He employed staff, including a butler and a chauffeur. He kept six cars, including a Rolls Royce. In early September of 1921, he bought a custom-built Pierce-Arrow touring car four times the size of an average car. Arbuckle told interviewers “Of course my car is four times the size of anyone else’s. I am four times as big as the average guy!” At $25,000, the car cost one hundred times the average American’s annual salary.

These excesses of Hollywood stirred the passions of the national press and caught the attention of politicians. Newspapers, particularly the Hearst dailies, ran editorials critical of movie actors, and calls came from many directions for the industry to police itself, which would ultimately come to fruition with the organization of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, known as the Hays Office, under the dictatorial regime of William Hays. It was in this charged environment that Arbuckle, exhausted from his work schedule, announced an “open” party at the St. Francis Hotel, loaded his Pierce-Arrow with supplies, and headed north to San Francisco.

Arbuckle left Los Angeles on Saturday morning, September 3, accompanied by his friends, actor Lowell Sherman and director Fred Fischbach. According to Arbuckle, they arrived in San Francisco late that afternoon, checked into the St. Francis and after an early dinner, went to bed. The St. Francis was, even then, legendary for its luxury and clientele. Built in 1904 by the Crocker heirs, one of California’s wealthiest families, during the 1920s it was the fashionable place to stay for politicians, celebrities and film actors.

Arbuckle took three adjoining rooms; 1219 for himself and Fischbach, 1221 for Sherman, and the middle room, 1220, from which the bed had been removed, as the party room. Rooms 1219 and 1221 each had their own bathroom, but 1220 was only rented by the hotel as an adjoining room for either 1219 or 1221 to make either a suite, and thus did not.

On Sunday, September 4, the three did some sightseeing and visited friends across the bay.

The following day was Monday, September 5, and the national holiday. Beginning in the morning Arbuckle’s suite began to fill with friends, and witnesses estimate that anywhere between fifteen and twenty people dropped by at various times throughout the day. Amongst them was a curious trio invited by Fischbach; petty criminal Maude Delmont, who described herself as a model, 25 year old bit actress Virginia Rappe, and Rappe’s manager, Al Semnacher. Arbuckle had never met any of them except in passing and there is some dispute about what they were doing in San Francisco that weekend, but according to witnesses familiar with the individuals the young actress was in San Francisco to have an abortion.

Young Virginia Rappe’s brush with history is limited solely to the events of that day in Arbuckle’s suite at the St. Francis. Born Virginia Rapp, she added the “e” to her last name because it sounded more elegant. According to interviews given after her death by her grandmother, Rappe was born out of wedlock following an affair between her mother, Mabel, and an English nobleman visiting Chicago where she lived. In an era where illegitimacy was still frowned upon, the pregnant Mabel moved to New York where her daughter was born, and where Mabel died eleven years later. Young Rappe then returned to Chicago to be raised by her grandmother.

Growing up she was indiscriminate in her relationships. She had at least five abortions by the age of sixteen, and at age seventeen gave birth to an out-of-wedlock child which she gave into foster care. Her good looks led to a modeling career in her teens and she moved to San Francisco where she pursued that work. She was engaged to a dress designer named Robert Moscovitz, but he was killed in a trolley accident before their wedding. Distraught and in financial straits, Rappe moved to Los Angeles where she took a room with an aunt.

In 1917, Rappe met and began dating director Henry Lehrman, and he helped her find the roles in her four credited films, although it is likely that she supported herself by prostitution. Rappe’s stormy relationship with Lehrman was well-known in Hollywood and unpopular. The two were accused of spreading venereal disease and lice, and Mack Sennett once ordered them off the Keystone lot and had it fumigated. Some people close to Rappe believed that in September of 1921 she was pregnant by Lehrman and heading to San Francisco that Labor Day weekend to abort his child.

Maude Delmont was a different kettle of fish entirely. Of uncertain age, her photo reveals her to be a woman of middle age with a dour expression. Using a string of aliases, she had an extensive police record, with at least fifty charges filed against her on crimes ranging from bigamy to extortion. She has been described as a professional co-respondent, a woman hired to provide compromising photos or evidence in divorces. How she met Semnacher is a matter of conjecture, but just the month before he had filed in San Francisco for divorce from his wife, and he admitted to having hired Delmont to obtain evidence of his wife’s adultery. Delmont met Semnacher at his Hollywood home on Saturday, September 3, where she was introduced to Rappe, and the three drove north to San Francisco.

By midmorning on Monday, September 5, the party in Arbuckle’s suite was in full swing. There was food, bootleg liquor, music and dancing, and a stream of guests coming and going. Fischbach, who had invited Semnacher, Delmont, and Rappe to the party, left to give someone a ride. Delmont retired with Sherman to his bedroom, evidently to have sex, leaving Arbuckle, Rappe and the other guests in the party room. Rappe became extremely drunk, then inexplicably erupted into hysterics and ran through the suite ripping at her clothes. Startled witnesses believed she had been accidentally kneed in the abdomen by Arbuckle while dancing. When Arbuckle later attempted to use the bathroom in his room, the door was blocked. When he finally opened it sufficiently to allow him to enter, he found Rappe on her knees vomiting into the toilet. She was crying with pain, and he carried her to his bed in Room 1219 to lie down. She continued to tear at her clothes.

Arbuckle left the bedroom and reentered the party room to get some ice, believing, he later testified, that it would calm her down. He placed several pieces of ice on her stomach and held one against her thigh. When Delmont next entered the room she found Rappe disheveled and screaming, with Roscoe leaning over her. The clamor brought other guests into the room, including actresses Zey Prevon and Alice Blake, along with Fischbach who had returned from his errand. Delmont ordered those present to fill the bathtub with cold water to cool Rappe’s fever. As Fischbach carried her, the young actress screamed at Arbuckle, “Stay away from me! I don’t want you near me!”

The cold bath apparently calmed Rappe down. Arbuckle and Fischbach located vacant room 1227 down the hall and took her there to lie down, Delmont following to keep an eye on her. Arbuckle phoned the hotel manager and asked for the physician on call, but he was busy with other guests. Eventually a Dr. Olav Kaarboe examined Rappe and determined that she was simply suffering from too much to drink.

The party continued without Delmont or Rappe for the rest of the afternoon in high spirits, and with no other incidents. Arbuckle left for a few hours to make arrangements to ship the Pierce-Arrow back to Los Angeles and when he returned to the hotel the primary hotel physician, Dr. Beardslee, had just arrived at Room 1227 to examine Virginia. She was screaming again, and Dr. Beardslee gave her an injection of morphine.

The next day, Tuesday, September 6, Rappe was no better. Dr. Beardslee checked on her four times during the day and gave her additional injections of morphine. Convinced now that the pain in her abdomen was not the fault of too much drink, he inserted a catheter to drain her bladder. Delmont, who had taken over the supervision of Rappe, summoned another doctor, Melville Rumwell, a physician associated with the local Wakefield sanitarium. This was an unusual selection but perhaps telling, as Dr. Rumwell was a specialist in maternity, and Wakefield an institution with a reputation for performing abortions.

Delmont now began telling people that Rappe’s injuries were the result of a sexual assault by Arbuckle. Both Beardslee and Rumwell ignored Delmont’s accusations, either because they were inconsistent with Rappe’s injuries, or in the case of Rumwell because he knew differently. That afternoon, Arbuckle, Fischbach, and Sherman checked out of the St. Francis, Arbuckle picking up the tab for the entire weekend including the bill for Room 1227. They boarded the ferry Harvard for the trip south to Los Angeles. On Wednesday, September 7, Arbuckle returned to work.

Back in San Francisco, Rappe’s condition continued to deteriorate. She was moved to the Wakefield sanitarium on Thursday afternoon. By then she was delirious with a high fever, her abdomen was distended, and Rumwell diagnosed her as suffering from peritonitis, an acute infection caused by a ruptured bladder. He felt her condition too delicate for an operation, and she died in the early afternoon of Friday, September 9.

In an unusual turn of events, Rumwell called in Dr. William Ophuls, a Stanford University professor in pathology, to assist in a post-mortem examination. They performed an illegal autopsy without the consent of the coroner’s office, removing and later destroying the bladder, uterus, rectum and fallopian tubes. With its reputation as an illicit abortion clinic, gossip suggested that Rappe had had her abortion at the clinic the day before the party, and that Rumwell had removed and disposed of her organs to destroy any evidence that her death was somehow a consequence of that operation.

After Rappe’s death, Maude Delmont contacted the San Francisco Police Department and swore out a complaint against Arbuckle, swearing that he had dragged Rappe in his bedroom and raped her, either personally or with a Coca-Cola bottle, and that her death was the result of his assault.

Coming in November, Part II: the trial.

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

U.S. presidents tend to disappoint you, even the ones who don’t dye their hair the color of a creamsicle.

President Obama said he’d close Guantamo on Day One, and that torture garden is still in business.

One president’s failure is another’s aspiration. The next guy ordered it remain open indefinitely. Probably meant to put his first presidential opponent there, and his second after the reinstatement that was supposed to happen a couple weeks ago (hand it to those QAnon kids: as Frank used to say, they’ve got high hopes).

Now, President Biden declared, come hell or high water — mostly hell — we had to get out of Afghanistan by end of business tomorrow.

[Perversely, he beat that already rushed and plan-free deadline as I was writing this: the last Globemaster military transport sneaked out at midnight Kabul time, leaving one hundred thousand and more people we promised to protect to the protection instead of people who despise and hate them.]

Never mind two decades of U.S. assurances to Afghans that if they worked with us, “we will have your backs” (they see only our backs now). Never mind the tens of thousands who’ve died apparently for nothing doing that work, the tens of thousands more of the abandoned who will die. Never mind the burgeoning human rights disaster that faces those who will live under Taliban rule.

There are fourteen million women and girls in Afghanistan. Approximately fourteen million of them will see their lives abruptly degraded again.

The Afghan writer Khaled Hosseini (“The Kite Runner”) had said we could not allow the people we have been calling “our partners” for twenty years to be murdered, to “be imprisoned, to be beaten and tortured and persecuted now that we have left. We have a moral obligation to follow through.”

But the last time someone suggested we had a moral obligation to the Afghans, Joe Biden said “Fuck that. We don’t have to worry about that. We did it in Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger got away with it.”

And now this president hopes to get away with it, with his own bungled exit, counting on a changed Taliban. He says he doesn’t trust the Taliban, yet to the Taliban he has entrusted Afghan rule and lives (even offering up a list of Afghans to evacuate — in Taliban hands now likely a death list).

We are the new Taliban, the old Taliban assured him, and things will be different — better — now.

Earlier this month, militants of the different and better Taliban 2.0 murdered an Afghan woman, murdered her for cause: her clothes were deemed tight-fitting and she brazenly wandered the town unescorted by a male relative.

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers published a report today that essentially predicts a war against young women on a par with the war that Richard Nixon declared in 1971 against drugs.

Since Roe v. Wade a woman has held the presumed right to lawfully obtain an abortion. But “lawfully” in recent years has been so whittled by state legislatures, and the Supreme Court so fattened with social conservatives, that this right is looking more and more like a wrong that may be punished with prison or worse.

NACDL Executive Director Norman Reimer, in his preface to “Abortion in America: How Legislative Overreach is Turning Reproductive Rights into Criminal Wrongs,” says the report “is intended to sound an alarm bell about a wave of expansive prosecutions that will likely follow any significant curtailment or reversal of Roe v. Wade.”

Erosion of Roe, he says, “may well open the floodgates to massive overcriminalization.” He should probably have said, yet more massive overcriminalization.

Key findings of the report include these:

• If Roe v. Wade is overturned it will result in a near complete ban on abortion in several states, vastly expanding the potential for criminal charges to be brought against those participating in or performing abortions in those states.
• State laws redefining “personhood,” to include an unborn child within the definition of a “person” or “human being” have been used to dramatically alter the scope of criminal liability in states in which such seemingly minor definitional changes have occurred, expanding the reach of criminal liability for serious offenses such as homicide, feticide, aggravated assault, as well as many other crimes, and in certain states they also threaten to expand the scope of criminal liability for the performance or receipt of an abortion.
• Although the majority of state statutes make explicit that their laws do not create criminal liability for women who receive abortions, proposed anti-abortion legislation and existing criminal statutes in states across the country will in fact subject women to criminal prosecutions and incarceration for their pregnancy outcomes including abortion.
• Existing state conspiracy, attempt, and accomplice liability statutes subject a wide range of individuals, beyond the women seeking abortions and the doctors performing them, to criminal penalties; such liability will only further expand if Roe v. Wade is overturned.
• Proposed anti-abortion legislation disproportionately impacts poor women, black women, and other women of color, highlighting the deeply sexist, racist, and classist nature of the recent and proposed new anti-abortion laws, and the manner in which such laws will contribute to the problem of systemic racism and classism within the criminal legal system.
• Anti-abortion laws, if permitted to go into effect, and/or a Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade will lead to rampant overcriminalization through regulatory enforcement and to mass incarceration on an unprecedented scale.
• In many states, additional legislative action is not required for recent abortion legislation to take effect. As such, Roe v. Wade may be the only safeguard preventing the vast expansion of criminal liability in relation to pregnancy and the performance of an abortion.

The full report is here.

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Like Elizabeth Warren, my maternal grandmother used to tell me I was one sixteenth American Indian, half of that Comanche and the other half Cherokee. At least that’s the way I remember it. Seems reasonable: both tribes are an extremely well-shot arrow’s flight from where my mother was born in Texas.

Like Elizabeth Warren, my maternal grandmother may have exaggerated, or I may have misremembered what she said, because later I learned from my older sister that I’m probably only one thirty-secondth American Indian. That means there’s just the tiniest Comanche living inside my body in search of just the tiniest Cherokee.

Unlike Elizabeth Warren, I never used that information, bogus or not, to try to get into a better college or land a better job. But I always did feel some pride and satisfaction knowing that at least those tiny parts of me deserved the land I was living on.

The people who fully deserved the land they were living on, actual indigenous Americans, have struggled since first they met the people from whom I have mostly descended. Their continued struggle is documented by the Justice Department in two articles published earlier this year in its Journal of Federal Law and Practice.

The articles detail law enforcement and prevention, legal, prosecution, advocacy, and healthcare aspects of missing or murdered indigenous persons, with a particular focus on children. American Indians experience two and a half times the national rate of violent crime, and the highest victimization rates for both men and women, across all ages, places of residence, and incomes. More rape, sexual assault, aggravated and simple assault. More interracial attack.

The articles are a comprehensive attempt to address these issues, and perhaps promote Native American health and healing.

They are here, and here.

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Following are the written statements and sound-and-fury recordings of the four police officers who testified Tuesday before the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.

Listen to the recordings if you can, because they put flesh and blood to the bare-boned words.

Most of the Republican members of Congress, for whom these men suffered grievous injury and risked worse, said they were too busy to listen to their testimony. Of course, they voted to prevent anyone hearing their testimony in the first place.

As Adam Kinzinger, one of the few Republicans who did put country before party, and sits on the committee, said while fighting back tears, to the men arrayed before him,

“I think it’s important to tell you right now, though: you guys may, like individually, feel a little broken, but you guys won. You guys held.”

They held for democracy. They held so we might keep our democracy.

Here are their words.

U.S. Capitol Police Sergeant Aquilino A. Gonell

Chairman Thompson and Members of the Select Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify regarding the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. It is with honor, and a heavy heart, that I come before you to tell you my story, from painful, first-hand experience, of what happened that terrible day at the Capitol. I am providing this testimony solely in my personal capacity, and not as a representative of the U.S. Capitol Police.

It is imperative that the events of January 6 are fully investigated, that Congress and the American people know the truth of what actually occurred, and that all those responsible are held accountable, particularly to ensure this horrific and shameful event in our history never repeats itself. I applaud you for pursuing this objective.

Even though there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary, including hours and hours of video and photographic coverage, there is a continuous and shocking attempt to ignore or try to destroy the truth of what truly happened that day, and to whitewash the facts into something other than what they unmistakably reveal: An attack on our democracy by violent domestic extremists, and a stain on our history and our moral standing here at home and abroad.

As a child in the Dominican Republic, I looked up to the United States as a land of opportunity and a place to better myself. From the moment I landed at JFK airport in 1992, I have strived to pursue that goal. Thankfully, I have achieved that goal on many levels: I was the first in my family to graduate college, join the U.S. Army, and become a police officer.

On July 23, 1999, the day before my 21st birthday, I raised my hand to give back to the country that gave me an opportunity to be anything I wanted. At the time, I had already started basic training with the Army Reserve. In fact, I have raised my hand several times in ceremonies to pledge my commitment to “Defend and Protect the Constitution of the United States”: when I joined the Army Reserves, when I was promoted to Sergeant while in the Army, during my naturalization ceremony, when I reenlisted in the Army, when I joined the United States Capitol Police, and lastly when I was promoted to sergeant in the U.S. Capitol Police 3 years ago. I have always taken my Oath seriously.

On January 6, 2021, I fulfilled my oath once more: this time, to defend the United States Capitol and Members of Congress carrying out their Constitutional duties to certify the results of the November 2020 presidential election.

To be honest, I did not recognize my fellow citizens who stormed the Capitol on January 6, or the United States they claimed to represent. When I was 25, and then a sergeant in the Army, I had deployed to Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom From time-to-time, I volunteered to travel on IED-infested roads to conduct supply missions for U.S. and allied military forces and local Iraqi populations. But on January 6, for the first time, I was more afraid working at the Capitol than during my entire Army deployment to Iraq. In Iraq, we expected armed violence, because we were in a war zone. But nothing in my experience in the Army, or as a law enforcement officer, prepared me for what we confronted on January 6.

The verbal assaults and disrespect we endured from the rioters were bad enough. I was falsely accused of betraying my “Oath” and of choosing my “paycheck” over my loyalty to the U.S. Constitution – even as I defended the very democratic process that protected everyone in that hostile crowd. While I was on the Lower West Terrace at the Capitol, working with my fellow officers to prevent a breach and restore order, the rioters called me a “traitor,” a “disgrace,” and shouted that I (an Army veteran and 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” us to achieve their goals as they were breaking metal barriers to use as weapons against us. Others used more menacing language: “If you shoot us, we all have weapons, and we will shoot back”, or “we will get our guns”. “We outnumber you, join us,” they said. I also heard specific threats on the lives of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and then-Vice President Mike Pence.

But the physical violence we experienced was horrific and devastating. My fellow officers and I were punched, pushed, kicked, shoved, sprayed with chemical irritants, and even blinded with eye-damaging lasers by a violent mob who apparently saw us law enforcement officers, dedicated to ironically protecting them as U.S. citizens, as an impediment in their attempted insurrection. The mob brought weapons to try to accomplish their insurrectionist objectives, and they used them against us. These weapons included hammers, rebars, knives, batons and police shields taken by force, as well as, bear spray and pepper spray. Some rioters wore tactical gear, including bulletproof vests and gas masks. The rioters also forcibly took our batons and shields and used them against us. I was particularly shocked at seeing the insurrectionists violently attack us with the very American flag they claimed they sought to protect. Based on the coordinated tactics we observed and verbal commands we heard, it appeared that many of the attackers had law enforcement or military experience.

The rioters were vicious and relentless. We found ourselves in a violent battle in a desperate attempt to prevent a breach of the Capitol by the entrance near the Inauguration Stage. Metropolitan DC Police (“MPD”) officers were being pulled into the crowd as we tried to push all the rioters back from breaching Capitol. In my attempt to assist two MPD officers, I grabbed one officer by the back of the collar and pulled him back to our police line. When I tried to help the second officer, I fell on top of some police shields on the ground that were slippery because of the pepper and bear spray. Rioters started to pull me by my leg, by my shield, and by my gear straps on my left shoulder. My survival instincts kicked in and I started kicking and punching as I tried in vain to get the MPD officers’ attention behind and above me. But they could not help me because they were also being attacked. I finally was able to hit a rioter who was grabbing me with my baton and able to stand. I then continued to fend off new attackers as they kept rotating after attacking us.

What we were subjected to that day was like something from a medieval battlefield. We fought hand-to-hand and inch-by-inch to prevent an invasion of the Capitol by a violent mob intent on subverting our democratic process. My fellow officers and I were committed to not letting any rioters breach the Capitol. It was a prolonged and desperate struggle. I vividly heard officers screaming in agony and pain just an arms-length from me. One of those officers is here today. I, too, was being crushed by the rioters. I could feel myself losing oxygen and recall thinking to myself “this is how I’m going to die, trampled defending this entrance.” Many of the officers fighting alongside me were calling for shields, because their shields had been stripped from them by the rioters. I was one of the few officers left with a shield, so I spent the majority of the time at the front of the line.

I later found out that my wife and relatives here in the U.S and abroad were frantically calling and texting me from 2:00 pm onwards because they were watching the turmoil live on television. But it was not until around 4:26 pm, after giving CPR to one of the rioters who breached the Capitol in an effort to save her life, that I finally had a chance to let my own family know that I was alive.

After order finally had been restored at the Capitol and after many exhausting hours, I arrived home at nearly 4:00 am on January 7. I had to push away my wife from hugging me because of all the chemicals that covered my body. I couldn’t sleep because the chemicals reactivated after I took a shower, and my skin was still burning. I finally fell asleep two hours later, completely physically and mentally exhausted. Yet by 8:00 am that day I was already on my way back to the Capitol, and I continued to work for 15 consecutive days until after the Inauguration. I made sure to work despite my injuries because I wanted to continue doing my job and help secure the Capitol complex. Six months later, I am still trying to recover from my injuries.

Many of my fellow Capitol Police officers, as well as MPD officers, suffered terrible physical injuries from the violence inflicted on us on January 6. I sustained injuries to both of my hands, my left shoulder, my left calf, and my right foot. I have already undergone fusion surgery on my foot, and I was just told that I need surgery on my left shoulder. I have been on medical and administrative leave for much of the past six months, and I expect to need further rehabilitation for possibly more than a year.

There are some who expressed outrage when someone simply kneeled for social justice during the national anthem. Where are those same people expressing outrage to condemn the violent attack on law enforcement officers, the U.S. Capitol, and our American democracy?

As America and the world watched in horror what was happening to us at the Capitol, we did not receive the timely reinforcements and support we needed. In contrast, during the Black Lives Matter protest last year, U.S. Capitol Police had all the support we needed and more. Why the different response? Were it not for the brave members of the MPD and officers for other agencies, I am afraid to think what could have happened on January 6. I want to publicly thank all the law enforcement agencies that responded to assist that day for their courage and support. I especially want to thank those Capitol Police officers who responded on their own.

Despite being outnumbered, we did our job. Every Member of the House of Representatives, Senator, and staff member made it home safely. Sadly, as a result of that day, we lost officers – some really good officers. But we held the line to protect our democratic process, and because the alternative would have been a disaster. We are not asking for medals or even recognition. We simply want accountability and justice.

For most people, January 6 happened for a few hours that day. But for those of us who were in the thick of it, it has not ended. That day continues to be a constant trauma for us literally every day, whether because of our physical or emotional injuries, or both. While it has not received much attention, sadly many of my colleagues have quietly resigned from the Capitol Police because of that day. I am also regularly called by the law enforcement officials and prosecutors to help identify rioters from photographs and videos. And to be honest, physical therapy is painful and hard. I could have lost my life that day, but as soon as I recover from my injuries I will continue forward and proudly serve my country and the U.S. Capitol Police. As an immigrant to the United States, I am especially proud to have defended the U.S. Constitution and our democracy on January 6. I hope that everyone in a position of authority in our country has the courage and conviction to do their part by investigating what happened on that terrible day, and why.

This investigation is essential to our democracy, and I am deeply grateful to you for undertaking it. I am happy to assist as I can, and answer any questions you have to the best of my ability.

Officer Michael Fanone of the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of this Committee, for inviting me to provide my eyewitness testimony of the violent assault on our Nation’s Capitol on January 6th, 2021.

My name, for those of you who don’t know, is Michael Fanone, and while I’ve been a sworn officer with the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., for almost two decades, my law enforcement career actually began here in this building as a United States Capitol Police officer shortly after 9/11. In part because of the 2001 attack on our country by terrorists, I felt called to serve. As a Capitol police officer, I was proud to protect this institution and the dedicated members of Congress and their staff who work hard each day to uphold our American democracy.

I remain proud of the work of the United States Capitol Police and MPD officers who literally commit their lives to protecting the safety of each of you, and all of us in this room, in our nation’s Capitol.

After leaving the United States Capitol Police, I became an MPD officer serving the residents of Washington, D.C. I have spent the majority of my nearly 20 years as a Metropolitan Police Officer working in special mission units whose responsibilities include the investigation and arrest of narcotics traffickers and violent criminals. I have worked both as an undercover officer and lead case officer in many of these investigations.

In this line of work, it probably won’t shock you to know that I’ve dealt with some dicey situations. 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 a 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 can still hear those words in my head today.

Although I regularly deal with risky situations on the job, nowhere in my wildest imagination did I ever expect to be in that situation, or sitting here before you talking about it. That experience and its aftermath were something that not even my extensive law enforcement training could prepare me for.

I was just one of hundreds of local police who lined up to protect Congress even though I had not been assigned to do that. Some had asked why we ran to help when we didn’t have to. I did that because I simply could not ignore what was happening. Like many other officers, I could not ignore the numerous calls, numerous calls for help coming from the Capitol complex. I’m a plainclothes officer assigned to the First District’s Crime Suppression Team. But for the first time in nearly a decade, I put on my uniform.

When my partner, Jimmy Albright, and I arrived at the Capitol around three that afternoon, it was unlike any scene I had ever witnessed. Jimmy parked our police vehicle near the intersection of South Capitol Street and D Street, Southeast and we walked to the Capitol from there, passing the Longworth House Office Building. It was eerily quiet and the sidewalks, usually filled with pedestrians, were empty. As we made our way to Independence Avenue, I could see dozens of empty police vehicles that filled the street, police barricades, which had been abandoned, and hundreds of angry protesters, many of whom taunted us as we walked towards the Capitol building.

Jimmy and I immediately began to search for an area where we could be of most assistance. We made our way through a door on the south side of the Capitol, walking then to the Crypt and finally down to the Lower West Terrace tunnel. It was there that I observed a police commander struggling to breathe as he dealt with the effects of CS gas that lingered in the air. Then I watched him collect himself, straighten his cap and trench coat, adorned with its Silver Eagles, and return to the line. That commander was Ramey Kyle of the Metropolitan Police Department. And those images are etched into my memory, never to be forgotten.

In the midst of that intense and chaotic scene, Commander Kyle remained cool, calm, and collected as he gave commands to his officers. “Hold the line,” he shouted over the roar. Of course, that day, “the line” was the seat of our American government. Despite the confusion and stress of the situation, observing Ray’s leadership, protecting a place I cared so much about, was the most inspirational moment of my life. The bravery he and others showed that day are the best examples of duty, honor, and service. Each of us who carries a badge should bring those core values to our work every day.

The fighting in the Lower West Terrace Tunnel was nothing short of brutal. Here, I observed approximately thirty police officers standing shoulder-to-shoulder, maybe four or five abreast, using the weight of their bodies to hold back the onslaught of violent attackers. Many of these officers were injured, bleeding, and fatigued. But they continued to hold the line.

As I don’t have to tell the Members in this room, the Tunnel is a narrow and long hallway. It is not the sort of space anyone would want to be pulled into hand-to-hand combat with an angry mob, although the narrowness of the hallway provided what was probably the only chance of holding back the crowd from entering your personal offices and the House and Senate chambers.

In an attempt to assist injured officers, Jimmy and I asked them if they needed a break. There were no volunteers. Selflessly, those officers only identified other colleagues who may be in need of assistance.

The fighting dragged on. I eventually joined the tactical line at the Tunnel’s entrance. I can remember looking around and being shocked by the sheer number of people fighting us. As my police body-worn camera shows, thousands upon thousands of people, seemingly determined to get past us by any means necessary.

At some point during the fighting, I was dragged from the line of officers and into the crowd. I heard someone scream, “I GOT one!” as I was swarmed by a violent mob. They ripped off my badge. they grabbed and stripped me of my radio. They seized ammunition that was secured to my body. They began to beat me with their fists and with what felt like hard metal objects. At one point I came face-to-face with an attacker who repeatedly lunged for me and attempted to remove my firearm. I heard chanting from some in the crowd, “Get his gun!” and “Kill him with his own gun.” I was aware enough to recognize I was at risk of being stripped of, and killed with, my own firearm. I was electrocuted, again and again and again with a taser. I’m sure I was screaming, but I don’t think I could even hear my own voice.

My body camera captured the violence of the crowd directed toward me during those very frightening moments. It’s an important part of the record for this Committee’s investigation, for the country’s understanding of how I was assaulted and nearly killed as the mob attacked the Capitol that day, and I hope that everyone will be able to watch it. The portions of the video I’ve seen remain extremely painful for me to watch at times. But it is essential that everyone understands what really happened that tragic day.

During those moments, I remember thinking there was a very good chance I would be torn apart or shot to death with my own weapon. I thought of my four daughters who might lose their dad. I remain grateful that no Member of Congress had to go through the violent assault that I experienced that day.

During the assault, I thought about using my firearm on my attackers. But I knew that if I did, I would be quickly overwhelmed. And that, in their minds, would provide them with the justification for killing me. So I instead decided to appeal to any humanity they might have. I said as loud as I could manage, “I’ve got kids.” Thankfully, some in the crowd stepped in and assisted me.

Those few individuals protected me from the crowd and inched me toward the Capitol until my fellow officers could rescue me. I was carried back inside. What happened afterwards is much less vivid. I had been beaten unconscious and remained so for more than four minutes. I know that Jimmy helped to evacuate me from the building and drove me to MedStar Washington Hospital Center, despite suffering significant injuries himself. At the hospital, doctors told me that I had suffered a heart attack, and I was later diagnosed with a concussion, traumatic brain injury, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

As my physical injuries gradually subsided and the adrenaline that had stayed with me for weeks waned, I have been left with the psychological trauma and the emotional anxiety of having survived such a horrific event. And my children continue to deal with the trauma of nearly losing their Dad that day.

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 [Editor’s Note: Fanone loudly slammed the witness table in front of him to punctuate this word]. My law enforcement career prepared me to cope with some of the aspects of this experience. Being an officer, you know your life is at risk whenever you walk out the door, even if you don’t expect otherwise law-abiding citizens to take up arms against you. But nothing — truly nothing — has prepared me to address those elected Members of our government who continue to deny the events of that day — and in doing so, betray their oath of office. Those very members whose lives, offices, staff members I was fighting so desperately to defend.

I agreed to speak here today, and have talked publicly about what happened, because I don’t think our response to the insurrection should have anything to do with political parties. I know that what my partner, Jimmy, and I suited up for on January 6th didn’t have anything to do with political parties, or about politics, or what political party any of you public servants belonged to. I’ve worked in this city for two decades and I’ve never cared about those things, no matter who was in office. All I’ve ever cared about is protecting you, and the public, so you can do your job in service to this country and for those whom you represent.

I appreciate your time and attention. I look forward to the committee’s investigation. And I am hopeful that with your commitment, we as a country will confront the truth of what happened on January 6th and do what is necessary to make sure this institution of our democracy never falls into the hands of a violent and angry mob.

We must also recognize the officers who responded that day, many unsolicited, and their countless acts of bravery and selflessness. It has been 202 days since 850 MPD officers responded to the Capitol and helped stop a violent insurrection from taking over this Capitol complex, which almost certainly saved countless Members of Congress and their staff from injury and possibly death. The time to fully recognize these officers is now.

Thank you again for the opportunity to provide my testimony here today.

Metropolitan Police Department Officer Daniel Hodges

Good morning to the Committee, members of the press, and to the country.

To the members of the Committee, I’d like to thank you for the invitation today to provide my account of my knowledge of and experiences from January 6th, 2021.

As the Chairman mentioned I am a member of Civil Disturbance Unit 42 and was working in that capacity on the day in question. A fully-staffed CDU platoon consists of one Lieutenant, four Sergeants, and twenty-eight Officers. We started that day at 7:30 AM and our assignment was to maintain high-visibility along Constitution Avenue, namely the blocks leading up to President’s Park, where then-President Donald Trump was holding his gathering. My particular station was in front of 1111 Constitution Avenue, where I stood on foot as the crowd poured down the street and into the park.

There were a significant number of men dressed in tactical gear attending the gathering. Wearing ballistic vests, helmets, goggles, military face masks, backpacks, and without identifiable, visible law enforcement or military patches, they appeared to be prepared for much more than listening to politicians speak in a park.

Two of my colleagues were approached by a group of 3 to 4 of such men. The men were white, in good shape, with load-bearing vests equipped with MOLLE pouches. They were wearing BDUs, or battle dress uniform pants, tactical boots, black sunglasses and short haircuts. They had radios and one was equipped with an earpiece.

After a bit of small talk one of them asked my colleagues something to the effect of, “Is this all the manpower you have? Do you really think you’re going to be able to stop all these people?” Dumbfounded, my colleagues simply expressed that they didn’t understand what the speaker meant, and the group continued on.

As the day went on and the speakers in the park said their piece, I monitored the crowd and the radio. Over the radio I heard our Gun Recovery Unit working constantly, monitoring those in the crowd suspected of carrying firearms and making arrests and seizures when possible. Multiple gun arrests were made from January 5th through the 7th against those attending, planning to attend, or had attended Donald Trump’s gathering. Unfortunately due to the course of events that day we will likely never know exactly how many were carrying firearms and other lethal weapons.

I don’t know what time it was, but eventually the flow of foot traffic reversed, with people leaving President’s Park and traveling eastbound down Constitution Avenue toward the United States Capitol.

At approximately 1230 PM I noticed a commotion about half a block to my east, and saw the crowd starting to coalesce around two figures. I ran to where they were and found a confrontation at the intersection of 10th and Constitution Avenue NW. One counter-protester, a black man, was backpedaling away from a white man in a Trump-labeled face mask who was closely following him with an outstretched arm. Myself and my colleague arrived first and physically separated the two, but a crowd of Donald Trump’s people had gathered. They attempted to bait the counter-protester into attacking, shouting insults such as “Your mother’s a whore!” and accusing him of “Hiding behind the cops.” Eventually enough MPD members had gathered to move along the crowd who continued eastbound toward the Capitol building, and the counter-protester departed northbound on 10th street.

Returning to my post I continued monitoring the radio. I could hear Commander Glover leading the defense efforts at the Capitol as the protesters began their transition from peaceful assembly into terrorism. I became agitated and wished we could move in to support as I could hear the increasing desperation in the Commander’s voice, yet we still had to wait for our orders to change. Eventually they did, as at approximately 130 PM the Commander authorized rapid response platoons to deploy their hard gear and respond to the Capitol, including CDU 42.

The last thing I remember hearing over the air before departing for the Capitol grounds was confirmation that our Explosive Ordinance Disposal team had discovered a “device”. Given which unit was being associated with this “device” I immediately realized MPD had discovered a bomb of some type near the Capitol. This thought was never far from my mind for the rest of the day.

We ran back to our vans and got on our hard gear as quickly as we could. Navigating alternate routes to avoid the foot traffic, we drove as close as we could to the Capitol, disembarking at the northwest side of the Capitol grounds. We gave our gear a final check and marched toward the west terrace.

The crowd was thinner the further out from the Capitol you were, so as we marched the resistance we initially met was verbal. A man sarcastically yelled “Here come the boys in blue! So brave!” Another called on us to “remember your oath.” There was plenty of boo-ing. A woman called us “stormtroopers.” Another woman, who was part of the mob of terrorists laying siege to the Capitol of the United States, shouted “Traitors!” More found appeal in the label, and shout “Traitors!” at us as we pass; one man attempted to turn it into a duosyllabic chant. We continue to march.

We had been marching in two columns, but as we got closer to the west terrace the crowd became so dense that in order to progress we marched single-file, with our hands on the shoulders of the man in front of us in order to avoid separation. However as we came close to the terrace our line was divided and we came under attack. A man attempted to rip my baton from my hands and we wrestled for control. I retained my weapon and after I pushed him back, he yelled at me “You’re on the wrong team!”

Cut off from our leadership at the font 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?!” Another takes a different tack, shouting “You will die on your knees!”

I was at the front of our group and determined we had to push our way through the crowd in order to join the defense proper, so I began shouting “Make way!” as I forged ahead, hoping that I’m clearing a path for the others to follow. However as I looked back I saw that the rest of the group came under attack and were unable to follow. The crowd attempted to physically bar the rest of the platoon from following. I backtrack and started pulling terrorists off of my team by their backpacks. Around this time one of the terrorists who had scaled the scaffolding that adorned the Capitol at the time threw something heavy down at me and struck me in the head, disorienting me (I suspect this resulted in the likely concussion I dealt with in the weeks after). Another man attempted to disarm me of my baton again, and we wrestled for control. He kicked me in my chest as we went to the ground. I was able to retain my baton again, but I ended up on my hands and knees and blind; the medical mask I was wearing to protect myself from the coronavirus was pulled up over my eyes so I couldn’t see. I braced myself against the impact of their blows and feared the worst. Thankfully my platoon had repelled their own attackers and got me back on my feet. The crowd started chanting “U-S-A!” at us, and we struck out again for the west terrace.

I led the charge again through the midst of crowd-control munitions, explosions, and smoke engulfing the area. Terrorists were breaking apart metal fencing and bike racks into individual pieces, presumably to use as weapons. Thankfully we made it to the secondary defense line on the west terrace that MPD and Capitol police were managing to hold. The rest of my platoon got behind the line and we take stock of the situation. I realized that back during the previous assault someone had stolen my radio; from that point on I was in the dark as to our current status and when reinforcements would arrive. Terrorists were scaling the scaffolding on both our sides, the tower that was in front of us, and attempting to breach the waist-high metal fencing that was the only barrier we had, aside from ourselves.

The sea of people was punctuated throughout by flags. Lots of American flags and Trump flags. Gadsden flags. It was clear the terrorists perceived themselves to be Christians: I saw the Christian Flag directly to my front. Another read “Jesus is my Savior, Trump is my President.” Another, “Jesus is King.” One flag read, “Don’t give up the ship”. Another had crossed rifles beneath a skull emblazoned with the pattern of the American flag. To my perpetual confusion, I saw the Thin Blue Line flag, a symbol of support for law enforcement, more than once being carried by the terrorists as they ignored our commands and continued to assault us.

The acrid sting of CS gas (tear gas) and OC spray (mace) hung in the air, as the terrorists threw our own CS gas canisters back at us and sprayed us with their own OC, either that they brought themselves or stole from us. Later I learned that at least one of them was spraying us in the face with wasp spray.

The terrorists alternated between attempting to break our defenses and shouting at or attempting to convert us. Men alleging to be veterans told us how they had fought for this country and were fighting for it again. One man tried to start a chant of “Four-more-years!” Another shouted “Do not attack us! We are not ‘Black Lives Matter!’” as if political affiliation is how we determine when to use force. A man in a “QAnon” hoodie exclaims, “This is the time to choose what side of history to be on!” A man whose shirt reads “God Guns & Trump” stood behind him, silently holding a Trump flag.

A new man came to the front and fixated on me, continually berated me, telling me to take off my gear and give it to him: “show solidarity with ‘we the people’ or we’re going to run over you!” his voice cracked with the strain and volume of his threats. He continued, “Do you think your little pea-shooter guns are going to stop this crowd? No! We’re going in that building!”

Eventually there is a surge in the crowd, the fence buckled and broke apart and we were unable to hold the line. A chaotic melee ensued. Terrorists pushed through the line and engaged us in hand-to-hand combat. Several attempted to knock me over and steal my baton. One latched onto my face and got his thumb in my right eye, attempting to gouge it out. I cried out in pain and managed to shake him off before any permanent damage was done. I couldn’t engage anyone fully for the moment I do is when another twenty terrorists move in to attack while I am occupied. It’s all we could do to keep ourselves on our feet and continue to fall back. I’m sprayed with a fire extinguisher and a red smoke grenade burned at our feet.

In the fight a terrorist is knocked to the ground and his jacket rides up, exposing a large hunting knife on his belt. I along with several other Officers piled on him while another removed the knife from his person. He regained himself, unharmed, and shouts indignantly, “What are you doing! What are you guys doing!”

The terrorists had claimed most of the western terrace, cornering myself and other Officers on the southern edge. We took a side stair off the terrace, up to an upper landing, followed by more stairs up and inside.

Inside the Capitol building Officers walked through the halls briefly until they found a place to sit, decontaminate their faces of OC and CS, and take a quick breather. I followed suit. Someone had managed to find a package of water bottles and was passing them out. I washed off my face as best as I could, rinsed out my mouth and drank the rest. I took the opportunity of relative safety to don my gas mask. Not long afterward I heard someone calling for Officers to move to assist. I steeled myself for another round and descended a stairway into a long hallway filled with smoke and screams.

The Capitol building is labyrinthine, but judging from the sound of intense combat I could tell this hallway led outside to where the terrorists had forced our retreat. Officers were stacked deep, but every so often one would fall back from the front line, nursing an injury or struggling to breathe, and those who remained would take a step forward.

It was a battle of inches, with one side pushing the other a few and then the other side regaining their ground. At the time I (and I suspect many others in the hallway) did not know that the terrorists had gained entry to the building by breaking in doors and windows elsewhere, so we believed ours to be the last line of defense before the terrorists had true access to the building, and potentially our elected representatives.

Eventually it was my turn in the meat grinder that was the front line. The terrorists had a wall of shields that they had stolen from Officers, as well as stolen batons and whatever other armaments they brought. Even during this intense contest of wills they continued to try to convert us to their cult. One man shouted “We just want to make our voices heard! And I think you feel the same! I really think you feel the same!”, all while another man attempts to batter us with a stolen shield. Another man, like many others, didn’t seem to appreciate that this wasn’t a game. He fought his way across the lawn, up the steps, through the western terrace, and at the front line of this final threshold was asking us to “hold on” because he “has asthma”.

The two sides were at a stalemate at a metal door frame that sat in the middle of the hallway. At the front line, I inserted myself so that the frame was at my back in an effort to give myself something to brace against and provide additional strength when pushing forward. Unfortunately soon after I secured this position the momentum shifted and we lost the ground that got me there. On my left was a man with a clear riot shield stolen during the assault. He slammed it against me and, with the weight of all the bodies pushing behind him, trapped me. My arms were pinned and effectively useless, trapped against either the shield on my left or the door frame on my right. With my posture granting me no functional strength or freedom of movement, I was effectively defenseless and gradually sustaining injury from the increasing pressure of the mob.

Directly in front of me a man seized the opportunity of my vulnerability. He grabbed the front of my gas mask and used it to beat my head against the door. He switched to pulling it off my head, the straps stretching against my skull and straining my neck. He never uttered any words I recognized, but opted instead for guttural screams. I swear I remember him foaming at the mouth. He also put his cell phone in his mouth so that he had both hands free to assault me. Eventually he succeeded in stripping away my gas mask, and a new rush of exposure to CS gas and OC spray hit me. The mob of terrorists were coordinating their efforts now, shouting “Heave! Ho!” as they synchronized pushing their weight forward, crushing me further against the metal door frame. The man in front of me grabbed my baton that I still held in my hands and in my current state I was unable to retain my weapon. He bashed me in the head and face with it, rupturing my lip and adding additional injury to my skull.

At this point I knew that I couldn’t sustain much more damage and remain upright. At best I would collapse and be a liability to my colleagues, at worst be dragged out into the crowd and lynched. Unable to move or otherwise signal the Officers behind me that I needed to fall back, I did the only thing I could still do and screamed for help.

Thankfully my voice was heard over the cacophony of yells and the blaring alarm. The Officer closest to me was able to extricate me from my position and another helped me fall back to the building again.

I found some water and decontaminated my face as best as I could. I don’t know how long I waited in the halls but soon after got back on my feet and went to where the fight was again. Until reinforcements arrived every able body made a difference.

Without my gas mask I was afraid I’d be a liability in the hallway so I took the exit outside to the upper landing above the west terrace. I found a police line being held and the terrorists encircling us, much like on the west terrace. It was getting later in the day however, and it appeared we weren’t the only ones getting tired. It seemed most of the mob was content to yell rather than to break our line again.

After some time of guarding the upper landing I saw reinforcements arrive from the south. I’m not sure which law enforcement agency it was but I turned to them and started clapping, as it was a sign that badly needed help was starting to finally arrive.

Soon after that I started feeling the effects of the day taking their toll, and I went back inside to rest. Gradually all the members of CDU 42 gathered in the room known as the Capitol Crypt. We checked on each other and convalesced, glad to see each other in one piece. Despite our exhaustion, we all would have ran out to the fight again should the need have arisen. Thankfully as the day wore on, more and more resources arrived at the Capitol to drive off the terrorists. We stayed in the Crypt until quite late, and even after we were allowed to leave the grounds we didn’t get to go home. Those who needed immediate medical attention took a van to the local hospital while the rest of us parked near the city center until the city was deemed secure enough for us to check off. I believe we finally got that message around 1 AM the following morning. We drove back to the Fourth district and from there went home.

Harry A. Dunn, Private First Class U.S. Capitol Police

Chairman Thompson and Members of the Select Committee, thank you for the opportunity today to give my account regarding the events of January 6, 2021, from my first- hand experience as a Capitol Police officer directly involved in those events, and still hurting from what happened that day. I am providing this testimony solely in my personal capacity, and not as a representative of the U.S. Capitol Police.

I reported for duty at the Capitol, as usual, early on the morning of January 6. We understood that the vote to certify President Biden’s election would be taking place that day, and that protests might occur outside the Capitol, but we expected any demonstrations to be peaceful expressions of First Amendment freedoms, just like the scores of demonstrations we had observed for many years. After roll call, I took my overwatch post on the east front of the Capitol, standing on the steps that lead to the Senate chamber. As the morning progressed, I did not see or hear anything that gave me cause for alarm.

But around 10:56 am, I received a text message from a friend forwarding a screen shot of what appeared to be a potential plan of action very different from a peaceful demonstration. The screen shot bore the caption “Jan. 6th –Rally Point – Lincoln Park,” and said the “objective” was “THE CAPITAL.” It said, among, other things, that “Trump has given us marching orders,” and to “keep your guns hidden.” It urged people to “bring…your trauma kits” and “gas mask,” to “[l]ink up early in the day” in “6-12 man teams,” and indicated there would be a “time to arm up.” Seeing that message caused me concern, to be sure, and looking back now, it seemed to foreshadow what happened later. At the time, though, we had not received any threat warnings from our chain of command, and I had no independent reason to believe that violence was headed our way.

As the morning progressed, the crowd of protestors began to swell on the east side of the Capitol, many displaying “Trump” flags. The crowd was chanting slogans like “Stop the Steal!” and “We want Trump!” But the demonstration was still being conducted in a peaceful manner.

Early that afternoon, Capitol Police dispatch advised all units over the radio that we had an “active 10-100” at the Republican National Committee nearby. “10-100” is police code for a suspicious package, such as a potential bomb. That radio dispatch got my attention and I started to get more nervous and worried, especially because the crowds on the east front of the Capitol were continuing to grow. Around the same time, I started receiving reports on the radio about large crowd movements around the Capitol, coming from the direction of the Ellipse to both the west and east fronts of the Capitol. Then I heard urgent radio calls for additional officers to respond to the west side, and an exclamation, in a desperate voice, that demonstrators on the west side had “breached the fence!”

Now it was obvious that there was an active threat to the Capitol. I quickly put on a steel chest plate (which weighs about 20 pounds) and, carrying my M-4 rifle, sprinted around the north side of the Capitol to the west terrace and the railing of the Inaugural stage, where I had a broad view of what was going on. I was stunned by what I saw. In what seemed like a sea of people, Capitol Police officers and Metropolitan DC Police (“MPD”) officers were engaged in desperate hand-to-hand fighting with rioters across the west lawn. Until then, I had never seen anyone physically assault a Capitol Police or MPD officer – let alone witness mass assaults being perpetrated on law enforcement officers. I witnessed the rioters using all kinds of weapons against the officers, including flag poles, metal bike racks they had torn apart, and various kinds 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.

Soon thereafter, I heard an “Attention, all units!” radio dispatch that the Capitol had been breached, and that rioters were in various places inside the building. At that point, I rushed into the Capitol with another officer, going first to the basement on the Senate side where I had heard an MPD officer needed a defibrillator. After returning outside to the west terrace to assist officers, I went back into the Capitol and up the stairs to the Crypt. There, I saw rioters who had invaded the Capitol carrying a Confederate flag, a red “MAGA” flag, and a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag.

I decided to stand my ground there to prevent any rioters from heading down the stairs to the lower west terrace entrance, because that was where officers were getting decontamination aid and were particularly vulnerable. At the top of the stairs, I confronted a group of the insurrectionists, warning them not to go down. One of them shouted “Keep moving, Patriots!” Another, displaying what looked like a law enforcement badge, told me “We’re doing this for you!” One of the invaders approached like he was about to try and get past me and head down the stairs, and I hit him, knocking him down.

After getting relieved by other officers in the Crypt, I took off running upstairs toward the Speaker’s Lobby, and helped a plain-clothes officer who was being hassled by insurrectionists. Some of them were dressed like members of a militia group, wearing tactical vests, cargo pants, and body armor. I was physically exhausted, and it was hard to breathe and see because of all the chemical spray in the air.

More and more insurrectionists were pouring into the area by the Speaker’s Lobby near the Rotunda, some wearing “MAGA” hats and shirts that said “Trump 2020.” I told them to leave the Capitol, and in response, they yelled back: “No, no, man, this is our house!” “President Trump invited us here!” “We’re here to stop the steal!” “Joe Biden is not the President!” “Nobody voted for Joe Biden!”

I am a law enforcement officer, and I keep politics out of my job. But in this circumstance, I responded: “Well, I voted for Joe Biden. Does my vote not count? Am I nobody?”

That prompted a torrent of racial epithets. One woman in a pink “MAGA” shirt yelled, “You hear that, guys, this nigger voted for Joe Biden!” Then the crowd, perhaps around twenty people, joined in, screaming “Boo! Fucking Nigger!”

No one had ever — ever — called me a “nigger” while wearing the uniform of a Capitol Police officer. In the days following the attempted insurrection, other black officers shared with me their own stories of racial abuse on January 6. One officer told me he had never, in his entire forty years of life, been called a “nigger” to his face, and that that streak ended on January 6.
Yet another black officer later told he had been confronted by insurrectionists inside the Capitol, who told him to “Put your gun down and we’ll show you what kind of nigger you really are!”

To be candid, the rest of that afternoon is a blur. But I know I went throughout the Capitol to assist other officers who needed aid, and to help expel more insurrectionists. In the Crypt, I encountered Sergeant Gonell, who was giving assistance to an unconscious woman who had been in the crowd of rioters on the west side of the Capitol. I helped to carry her to the House Majority Leader’s office, where she was administered CPR. As the afternoon wore on, I was completely drained both physically and emotionally, and in shock and disbelief over what had happened. Once the building was cleared, I went to the Rotunda to recover with other officers and share our experiences from that afternoon. Rep. Rodney Davis was there offering support to officers, and when he and I saw each other he came over and gave me a big hug.

I sat down on a bench with a friend of mine who is also a black Capitol Police officer, and told him about the racial slurs I had endured. I became very emotional and began yelling “How the [expletive] can something like this happen?! Is this America?” I began sobbing, and officers came over to console me.

Later on January 6, after order and security had been restored in the Capitol through the hard work and sacrifices of law enforcement, Members took to the floor of the House to speak out about what had happened that day. Among them was House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who – along with my fellow officers — I had protected that day, and will protect today and tomorrow. And the Minority Leader, to his great credit, said the following to the House: “The violence, destruction, and chaos we saw earlier was unacceptable, undemocratic, and un-American. It was the saddest day I’ve ever had serving in this institution.” Members of this Select Committee, the Minority Leader was absolutely right that day in how he described what took place at the Capitol. And for those of us in the Capitol Police who serve and revere this institution, and who love the Capitol building, it was the saddest day for us as well.

More than six months later, January 6 still isn’t over for me. I have had to avail myself of multiple counseling sessions from the Capitol Police Employee Assistance Program, and I am now receiving private counseling therapy for the persistent emotional trauma of that day. I have also participated in many peer support programs with fellow law enforcement officers from around the United States. I know so many other officers continue to hurt, both physically and emotionally.

I want to take this moment and speak to my fellow officers about the emotions they are continuing to experience from the events of January 6. There is absolutely nothing wrong with seeking professional counseling. What we all went through that day was traumatic, and if you are hurting please take advantage of the counseling services that are available to us. I also respectfully ask this Select Committee to review the services available to us and consider whether they are sufficient to meet our needs, especially with respect to the amount of leave we are allowed.

In closing, we can never again allow our democracy to be put in peril as it was on January 6. I thank the Members of this Select Committee for your commitment to determine what led to the disaster at the Capitol on January 6, what actually took place at the Capitol that day, and what steps should be taken to prevent such an attack on our democracy from ever happening again.

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify, and I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.