During the House select committee’s first hearing to investigate the January 6 Capitol insurrection, a Black Capitol Police Officer recounted his harrowing encounter with a group of pro-Trump rioters that had stormed the building to protest the presidential election results.
Appearing before the panel on Tuesday, Officer Harry Dunn testified he was called the N-word by several pro-Trump rioters while he was trying to get them to leave the building after they forced their way inside.
According to The Hill, Dunn told the lawmakers the people he had encountered during the insurrection and told them to leave were wearing “Make America Great Again” hats and “Trump 2020” shirts.
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“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,” Dunn was told.
And though Dunn told the panel he does his best to keep politics out of his job, he said he told the rioters who he voted for – because of that “circumstance” – and posed a question to them.
“But in this circumstance, I responded, ‘Well, I voted for Joe Biden. Does my vote not count? Am I nobody?’” Dunn said. That, however, did not help calm tempers as the Black law enforcement officer recalled it “prompted a torrent of racial epithets.”
Dunn said a woman wearing a MAGA shirt responded to his comments by shouting, “You hear that guys, this n—– voted for Joe Biden.” He recalled that prompted about 20 other people to also hurl the racial slur at him, saying they yelled “boo f—ing n—–.”
After the building was eventually secured and the rioters were dispersed, Dunn recalled an emotional conversation he had in the Capitol Rotunda with a Black colleague officer and friend, The Hill reported.
“I told him about the racial slurs I endured and became very emotional and began yelling, ‘How the blank could something like this happen? Is this America?’” Dunn said. “I began sobbing. Officers came over to console me.”
The January 6 Capitol siege unfolded while the Senate and House of Representatives had convened to certify the state results of the presidential election which saw Joe Biden emerge as the winner.
The rioters had earlier gathered in the nation’s capital to protest the results of the presidential elections citing baseless accusations of fraud which had been propagated by former president Donald Trump. The rioting was also spurred by a speech Trump gave while addressing them as he reiterated the election was fraudulent and called on the protesters to “walk down to the Capitol.”
Dunn, in his closing remarks, called on the panel to investigate and bring to book whoever was responsible for inciting the rioters – citing a murder-for-hire scenario to make his point.
“If a hit man is hired and he kills somebody, the hit man goes to jail. But not only does the hit man go to jail, but the person who hired them does,” Dunn said. “It was an attack carried out on Jan. 6 and a hit man sent them. I want you to get to the bottom of that.”
