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Five takeaways from gripping officer testimony at the first January 6 hearing

2021-07-27 00:00:00.0 美国有线电视-特朗普新闻原网页

(CNN)The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack at the Capitol held its first hearing on Tuesday with harrowing testimony from four officers who shared their stories of being attacked by the rioters.

The three-hour hearing was the opening act for the committee that's preparing to investigate all of the circumstances surrounding the January 6 insurrection, including the role played by former President Donald Trump. But the first hearing was focused squarely on the violence officers faced at the hands of a mob of Trump supporters.

Here are five takeaways from the committee's first hearing:

Gripping, gut-wrenching testimony illustrates the violence of January 6

One by one, the four officers who testified Tuesday -- DC Metropolitan Police Officers Daniel Hodges and Michael Fanone, and Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and Sgt. Aquilino Gonell -- recounted their gut-wrenching stories about how they were attacked and their lives were threatened on January 6.

Committee members showed the body camera footage from the officers to illustrate their harrowing accounts. Both the witnesses and lawmakers became emotional at multiple points.

Hughes described how he was forced to scream out in agony as he was pressed between the rioters and a metal doorframe. Fanone described how he was dragged into the crowd, beaten and electrocuted repeatedly with his Taser.

"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,'" Fanone said. "I can still hear those words in my head today."

Dunn's testimony included detailing pro-Trump supporters hurled racial epithets at him, calling him the n-word, something he said he had never experienced while wearing his police uniform. He described afterward how he sat down with another black officer "and told him about the racial slurs I endured."

"I became very emotional and began yelling, 'How the blank could something like this happen? Is this America?'" Dunn said.

Gonell, who served in Iraq, said he was more afraid working at the Capitol on January 6 than at any point in serving a war zone. "I remember thinking to myself, this is how I am going to die, defending this entrance," said Gonell, who couldn't hug his wife when he returned home the following morning because he was covered in chemical spray.

The gripping testimony hit home the point, over and over again, about just how violent the January 6 attack on the Capitol really was even as the insurrection has become a political fight in the months that have followed.

This was no tourist visit

Trump and some his GOP allies have actively tried to downplay the violence that occurred on January 6. Some congressional Republicans have suggested there was no insurrection, that the rioters weren't violent or armed, and Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia even compared scenes from the January 6 rioters to a "normal tourist visit."

Trump, in an interview with The Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig for their book released this month, said it was a "loving crowd" on January 6.

Tuesday's testimony sliced through those efforts to whitewash the events of January 6. The body-cam footage was violent and hard to watch.

The officers said the rioters they fought against were terrorists. Woven into the stories about how they and their colleagues were attacked -- and in some cases badly injured -- the officers expressed outrage that the violence launched by pro-Trump supporters was being ignored by the very lawmakers they protected that day.

"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 wasn't actually that bad," Fanone said.

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