Former U.S. Capitol Sgt. Aquilino Gonell was beaten with a flag pole waving an American flag, bitten, punched and struck with his own baton while fighting off a mob on January 6, 2021. Gonell, among dozens of officers injured in the assault, struggled to breathe under the weight of rioters crushing him. Doctors later installed screws and a metal plate to hold his foot together.
However, everyone involved in the attack received a pardon from President Donald Trump, and the Department of Justice on Tuesday moved to toss out the remaining cases — and most serious convictions — to finish off what the president started on his first day in office.
“Instead of praising the actions of the first responders for protecting elected officials on Jan. 6, Trump and his administration continue their assault on the truth,” Gonell told The Independent.
“If this administration really supports the police, law and order and the rule of law, it wouldn’t be fighting so hard to rewrite or erase the violent history of the attack on our democracy and my colleagues,” he said. “History will record this betrayal accordingly.”
The motions are the latest efforts in the president’s ongoing attempts to rewrite the history of the 2020 election and downplay the violence that was captured on video and admitted by assailants who tried to stop members of Congress from certifying his loss. The president himself was federally indicted for his alleged attempts to overturn election results and his failure to stop the mob, but the case was thrown out after his election in 2024.
Former Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone, who suffered a heart attack after a rioter shocked him with a stun gun, wasn’t surprised by the Justice Department’s efforts to erase what remains of the criminal cases against members of the mob.
“Another Day, Another Injustice by this administration’s DOJ,” Fanone wrote.
“I would remind Americans that these were traitors to this country, he added. “They planned, incited and carried out an insurrection. Are we really going to let this stand?”
Harry Dunn, a Capitol Police officer now running for Congress who endured the mob’s racist slurs and left the chaos with bloody fists, said the Trump administration has opened a “nonstop faucet of people with no accountability for January 6.”
“It’s just so frustrating,” he told MSNOW.
On Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro filed motions in Washington, D.C. to erase convictions against 12 members of far-right groups, the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, including defendants convicted of treason-related charges.
More than 1,500 people were criminally charged in connection with the riots, fueled by Trump’s false narrative that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and stolen from him. Hundreds of defendants pleaded guilty, and more than 200 others were found guilty at trial.
Trump pardoned virtually every person charged in connection with the attack, but those pardons did not extend to several defendants convicted of seditious conspiracy. The president instead freed them from federal custody.
Pirro and federal prosecutors are now asking the U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C. to wipe out their convictions so they can formally dismiss them.
“In the Executive Branch’s view, it is not in the interests of justice to continue to prosecute this case or the cases of other, similarly situated defendants,” prosecutors wrote.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary committee who served on the congressional panel that investigated January 6, called the motions “an appalling and dangerous turn of events.”
“These astounding motions are a humiliation for American democracy,” he said in a statement. “They constitute an attempt to vaporize the verdicts rendered unanimously by American jurors who considered all the evidence, and to pretend that these seditious conspiracies against our government never happened.”
The Justice Department said the move “ends these years-long, Biden-era weaponized prosecutions.”
“President Trump demanded we stop the two-tiered injustice — and we are delivering,” DOJ said in a statement. “No more rigged system.”
Dozens of people who were convicted or accused of a range of crimes in connection with the riots are now suing the federal government, alleging law enforcement officers used excessive force while fighting back against them.
The Justice Department has already settled with the family of Ashli Babbitt, who was fatally shot by a Capitol police officer after trying to break into the House of Representatives. Trump has also pledged he would “look at” the government’s decision to drop a potential case against the officer who shot her.
A newly launched White House website blames law enforcement officers for “deliberately escalating tensions” during the attack.
Dunn says he has been trying to get over it, but everyday Americans are now getting a “taste of injustice” with the president’s attempt to whitewash history.
“He didn’t think they did anything wrong. He didn’t think we were assaulted,” Dunn said. “If you assault police officers, you should be held accountable. … Do we not deserve justice? Do our coworkers not deserve justice?”
Gonnell and Democratic members of Congress are hopeful a historical record will preserve what happened that day.
“No matter how many pardons Trump issues, how many rioters he hires into his administration, how many settlements, reparations or restitutions he awards to his marauders, they will always be known as traitors for their concerted assault on our U.S. Capitol trying to upend our constitution,” Gonnell said.
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