VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Michael Fanone On Surviving January 6 Captiol Riot, Part 2

On January 6, 2021, rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol as a joint session of Congress met to certify President Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election.

Michael Fanone, a D.C. police officer who was brutally attacked after self-deploying to the Capitol that morning, sat for a conversation with uPolitics founder Erik Meers to discuss top Republicans’ response to the attack.

“My overall impression of [House Minority Leader] Kevin McCarthy (R-California) was that he was indifferent to my experience and to the experience of other officers that fought on Janaury 6. It was clear that to Kevin McCarthy. we were a political inconvenience and that he was doing whatever he could to minimize the negative optics of his party’s support for Donald Trump and any negative political fallout they might experience because of that.”

Fanone also addressed what he sees as accountability for Trump and his allies.

“For me, justice is if there are crimes committed or evidence that crimes were committed that those individuals should be tried and I think that’s up to us as American citizens to accept the results of that trial,” he said. “They certainly warrant a trial if there’s evidence that crimes were committed. Now that being said, I think there were a lot of people that were supportive before or after the fact who may be morally or ethically responsible, but not criminally, and I think ultimately the American people are our own ethics board. We have the ability to vote these people out of office, so that’s what I would like to see happen to those who may not have committed crimes in relation to the insurrection on January 6, but certainly out supporting it.”

Learn more about Fanone by picking up a copy of his book, Hold the Line: The Insurrection and One Cop’s Battle for America’s Soul today.