Last night, the House Committee on the January 6th insurrection showed video of the rioters attacking law enforcement, and Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn wept.
Dunn, a Black man who was called the N-word by the largely white crowd on that day, sat next to Metro Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who was beaten on January 6th.
But the men weren’t the stars last night. The distinction went to Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards—who was knocked unconscious by the pro-Trump mob and was later sprayed with chemicals and tear gas. The scene she described in her testimony was hellish.
“I was slipping in people’s blood,” she said. “I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage. It was chaos. I can’t even describe what I saw. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine as a police officer I would find myself in the middle of a battle … I’m not combat trained. That day it was just hours of hand-to-hand combat.”
All of it, according to committee vice chair Liz Cheney, was orchestrated by one man. “President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” she said. Cheney was right.
The scary thing is that even those close to Trump knew what he was doing was wrong. Former Attorney General Bill Barr was among them. “I made it clear I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff, which I told the president was bullshit,” Barr said in videotaped testimony. “And I didn’t want to be a part of it…” So, Barr left.
But Trump was still there, directing Republicans who repeated his lies about a stolen election. Cheney had words for them, too.
“There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone,” she said, “but your dishonor will remain.”
Photo: 01/15/21 State Capitol By. Chad Davis
