 |
| Met Police Dept Narc officer Michael Fanone ABC News |
"It looked like a medieval battle scene. Some of
the most brutal combat I've ever encountered."
"There’s no longer any police lines. There's just chaos.
Rioters running rampant across the Capitol grounds, fatigued, you know,
injured officers everywhere."
"[Officers who were in the tunnel defending the Capitol were] fighting like lions."
"Some
guys pulled me out into the crowd and some were yelling something ...
they were beating me." "At one point, I got tased, people were
yelling out, 'We got one. We got one'."
"Individuals
in the crowd tried to get my gun. At one point, people started
chanting, 'Kill him with his own gun'. I remember at one
point, you know, some of the people in the crowd while I was getting
tasered, they were stripping my gear off of my vest, my badge off my
radio. They started grabbing ammunition magazines from my belt."
"I remember yelling out, not to anybody in specific, 'I have kids' and it seemed to work."
 |
| Met Police Dept Officer Daniel Hodges ABC News |
"Some of them were absolutely crazed -- I would call them zealous true
believers. They would let nothing stop them
from getting inside. And it didn't matter, what they had to do to get
inside."
"I thought, 'this could be the end,' or 'I could not get out of this completely intact'."
"The guy in front of me, that guy, he was practically foaming
at the mouth. He was screaming and just grabbed my arm, grabbed my
filter on my masks, started beating my head against the door frame and
ripping it off as best he could."
"Once he got my mask off,
he also was able to rip away my night baton from me and started beating
me in the head with it."
"Once
they ripped my mask off, I was sucking in pepper spray, OC spray and
tear gas the entire time. Obviously, that many people yelling in the
tunnel is extremely loud. It was just a sensory overload. But all I know
is that no one was getting by me."
“They were waving the 'thin-blue-line flag' while they were assaulting us.""It’s not an exaggeration to say that we defended a democracy, that
everyone's duly-elected representatives were in that building and the
mob outside was not."
Metropolitan Police Department Officer Daniel Hodges
 |
Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as they push barricades to storm the Capitol
Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images |
Washington,
federal District of Columbia is preparing to inaugurate a new
president, the 46th President of the United States of America. The
inauguration will take place during a time of great internal division,
the polarization of America between left and right, Democrat and
Republican. Bipartisan reconciliation at this time in the history of the
United States appears exceedingly remote. Americans failed to see any
measure of agreement, only dissonance and hostility between those they
elected to the House of Representatives and in the Senate in the past
four years, and what they saw instructed them on how to react.
The
United States Congress is so fundamentally at odds it seems to have
disintegrated into a heckling, jeering high-school chorus of juvenile
delinquents at times. The Democrats turned sharp left, their junior
members calling for a version of America that would reflect their social
values and they would accept nothing less. The Republicans remained
wedded to their version of America the Great, the showpiece of world
order and Democracy in Action. And their choice for president of that
great country astonished the world. And the world watched as the United
States retreated from its position of eminent leadership.
When
Donald Trump was elected president, Democrats refused to accept that
this was their new democratically elected president, that a majority of
Americans saw promise in this man and opted to bring him to office.
Rallies were organized post inauguration, conspiracy theories were given
prominent and official status, and for the length of his stay in office
until he was thwarted for a second term, he was considered by Democrats
to be an illegal resident of the White House. Now, with the ascension
of Joe Biden it is the Republicans' turn to refuse acknowledgment of his
legitimacy -- with a vengeance, rude and violent.
There
are now more troops stationed in Washington and around the 50 states
than the collective of U.S. servicemen in Europe, Iraq or Afghanistan.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the federal body that serves as the
internal monitor of criminal investigation in the United States, along
with the Department of Homeland Security has warned lawmakers of the
presence of radicalized followers of President Trump in dangerous
insurrection mode, planning ongoing violent attacks against the nation
in their zeal to promote overturning of the election results that
rejected Mr.Trump and won the presidency for Mr.Biden.
 |
Protesters climbed the bleachers that were erected for Biden's inauguration Getty Images
|
Countrywide,
armed attacks by radicalized militants for whom the prospect of
President Trump leaving the White House for a Biden/Democratic occupancy
motivates them to threaten the stability and security of the nation by
an armed insurrection of hostile far-right and nationalist elements,
among the 76 million loyal Americans who voted for a man who promised
that their working-class rights would be upheld against the elites and
the capitalists entrenched in Washington who look after their own
well-being, disinterested in the needs of the greater population. They
believed him then, and believe him still.
With
the president's second impeachment, and his loyal followers' display of
hostile, derogatory and violent reactions -- with the current of viral
disaffection still on display as Internet communications continue to
recruit and build on the violent disruption that took place on 6
January, the country is on virtual lockdown, not because of the
coronavirus sweeping maliciously through the country, but martial law
resulting from the malevolent violence of mob action in support of a
disgraced president.
"Lacking
designations for initiating a nationwide case for pursuing connected
violence, federal law enforcement largely pursues cases reactively after
an attack."
"Individual
cases are pursued across dozens or even hundreds of jurisdictions even
though subjects congregate, communicate, and collaborate with each other
in online environments. Domestic terrorism's lack of designation also
results in no effective measure for understanding the size, shape, and
scale of each violent extremist threat."
Clint Watts, cybersecurity and counterterrorism expert
The
FBI appears to believe that the riot in Washington was an "inside job"
aided and abetted by a few members of Congress or their aides, along
with some police. Last year a report emerged stating that supremacists
and neo-Nazis had infiltrated security, military and police forces
nationwide. Two known radical members of Congress appear to be under
investigation. Unless these claims too, are part of a wider web of
conspiracy theories. As though the entire nation has become the victim
of fallacious demagoguery, suffering from a mass psychosis.
That
President Donald Trump in his dwindling days in power, incited
thousands of his faithful followers to embark on a trajectory of violent
dissent, disrupting the transition between administrations, casting
aspersions on the kind of democracy they see playing out no longer
favouring their version of events is beyond question. His speech
furthermore -- hours before the mob's descent on the Capitol -- primed
the mob to action, urged them to flood the Capitol, to leave no doubt
that he and he alone is fit to govern the United States of America.
 |
Michael Fanone, a DC detective, was dragged into the crowd and beaten Reuters
|
<< Home