MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Here in Washington today, Trump supporters who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, took a victory lap.
JAKE LANG: I'm very proud to have done what I did on January 6, and I think that it was just the beginning of what America needs to cleanse itself.
JUANA SUMMERS, BYLINE: Jake Lang was charged with assaulting police during the riot. He and others gathered today in part to send a message. Even though Trump is president now, he said...
LANG: That does not mean the deep state and the globalists are not hot on our trail, and it'll come to the point where a real crusade is needed, and that's what we're gearing up for.
KELLY: Jake Lang's case was dismissed as part of President Trump's order to pardon nearly all the January 6 defendants on his first day in office. Today's event looked nothing like what took place on this day just five years ago. We're going to revisit now a few key moments from January 6, 2021. And a warning - this story includes descriptions of violence.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER #1: Fall back.
(CROSSTALK)
SUMMERS: On January 6, as police were desperately trying to hold back an armed and violent mob, some officers could barely keep their eyes open from the rioters' chemical sprays.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER #2: I can't breathe. I can't.
KELLY: The mob, motivated by Trump's lies about the 2020 election, had stormed the Capitol to keep him in power. At a key entrance, one officer yelled, if they breach those doors, it's all over.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER #3: Let's go, on me. Let's go, MPD. We are not losing the U.S. Capitol today. Do you hear me?
(SOUNDBITE OF LOUD BANGING)
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER #4: Yes, sir.
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER #3: We are not losing the U.S. Capitol. Night sticks out.
(SOUNDBITE OF HIGH-PITCHED RINGING)
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER #3: Shields.
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER #5: Shields up front.
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER #6: He's got a weapon in his hand.
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER #7: OK.
(SOUNDBITE OF GLASS SHATTERING)
SUMMERS: NPR investigative correspondent Tom Dreisbach has reported on January 6 from the very beginning, and he has a story today about how the government is actively trying to rewrite the history of that day.
TOM DREISBACH, BYLINE: That area where police tried to hold the line is called the Lower West Terrace Tunnel. It's narrow, dark. And on January 6, Michael Fanone was at the head of a scrum of cops trying to keep the mob out.
MICHAEL FANONE: And I remember trying to, like, appeal to them. And I said, like, we have injured officers here.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Shouting, inaudible).
FANONE: C'mon buddy. We've got injured officers. We have injured people.
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER #8: Back it up.
UNIDENTIFIED RIOTER #1: I'm not backing up. F*** off.
FANONE: And, like, it just seemed to set these guys off. And immediately after that, it's like all hell broke loose, and we start into the melee.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER #9: C'mon MPD, dig in. Push 'em back. Dig in.
DREISBACH: Fanone and the cops behind him started to get some momentum, pushing back the rioters. But the momentum pushed Fanone, too. And then a rioter put his arm around Fanone's neck and yelled...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED RIOTER #2: I got one.
FANONE: He says, I got one. I got one. And that's when I was just like, [expletive]. You know, when I'm out in this crowd, like, I'm being assaulted from every direction. So I'm trying to, like, keep people away from my weapon. People are yelling, like, kill him with his gun.
DREISBACH: One man took an electroshock weapon and drove it into Fanone's neck twice.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
FANONE: (Screaming) Aah. (Screaming) Aah. I got kids.
(CROSSTALK)
DREISBACH: A handful of people tried to stop the assaults.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JIMMY ALBRIGHT: Where do you want to go?
FANONE: Let's go back inside.
ALBRIGHT: You want to go back inside?
FANONE: Yeah.
And that's when, like, my recollection goes from so vivid to, like, nothing.
DREISBACH: Fanone collapsed face first.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ALBRIGHT: Officer down.
DREISBACH: His partner, Jimmy Albright, helped drag him behind the police line.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER #10: We need a medic. We need EMTs now.
ALBRIGHT: I got it. It's my partner. C'mon. Mike, stay in there, buddy. Mike, it's Jimmy. I'm here. Hi. Mike. Mike, I'm here for you, bud. C'mon, dude.
UNIDENTIFIED EMT: C'mon. Wake up, brother. Talk to me, man.
ALBRIGHT: C'mon, Mike. C'mon, buddy. We're going duck hunting soon.
DREISBACH: Suddenly, his eyes open.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
FANONE: Did we take that door back?
ALBRIGHT: Yeah. We did.
DREISBACH: Did we take that door back, he asked. And they did. But only after the vice president and members of Congress were forced to flee for their lives and after 140 police officers were injured. Fanone was one of them. He suffered a mild heart attack and a traumatic brain injury that still affects his memory. Another officer was assaulted with pepper spray and died of a stroke the next day. Two other officers took their own lives in the days afterwards. And after all that violence and destruction, at first, there was a kind of consensus about that day. Here's what Republican Senator Ted Cruz said one year later.
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TED CRUZ: We are approaching a solemn anniversary this week, and it is an anniversary of a violent terrorist attack on the Capitol.
DREISBACH: But that consensus fell apart.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TUCKER CARLSON: You called this a terror attack when by no definition, was it a terror attack. That's a lie.
DREISBACH: Tucker Carlson confronted Cruz on Fox News.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CRUZ: The way I phrased things yesterday, it was sloppy and it was frankly dumb and...
CARLSON: I don't buy that.
DREISBACH: Cruz said he only meant to call the people who assaulted police terrorists, but even that became up for debate. That same year, the Republican National Committee described January 6 as, quote, "legitimate political discourse." Pro-Trump influencers spread conspiracy theories that the attack was an inside job by the deep state. And by 2023, Trump was posting that the cops should be charged and the protesters should be freed.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, "Justice For All," featuring President Donald J. Trump and the J6 choir.
J6 CHOIR: (Singing) Oh, say can you see...
DREISBACH: Trump opened the very first rally of his 2024 election campaign with a version of the national anthem sung by January 6 defendants in jail, including people who assaulted cops. The Justice Department charged more than 1,500 people for their roles in the riot. More than a thousand pleaded guilty, but that did not make Trump run from January 6. He ran on it.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: That was - I call them the J6 hostages.
Many of those people are very innocent people. They did nothing wrong.
And they're great people. Many of them were just great people.
DREISBACH: And on his first day back in office...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: So this is January 6. These are the hostages, approximately 1,500 for a pardon.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Yes.
TRUMP: Full pardon.
DREISBACH: He issued mass pardons and began using the government to try to rewrite history. The administration fired prosecutors who worked on January 6 cases and hired a former January 6 defendant who urged rioters to kill cops. They deleted government information on January 6, and NPR and other media organizations had to go to court to make sure video evidence would not be disappeared. Trump even issued a blanket pardon to anyone who tried to help him overturn the 2020 election.
We are now a year into this effort to sanitize January 6. Still, for many people who were there that day, it does not feel like a day of love so much as a day of loss, even for pardoned rioters.
DOMINIC BOX: I've been couch hopping, effectively, since I got out of prison. And, you know, I've been selling the few items that I still have, shoes, clothes. But it's really just, you know, praying and staying positive that eventually I'll find an opportunity that'll work.
DREISBACH: Dominic Box was convicted of nonviolent charges for recording himself storming the Capitol. Now, he's hoping Trump will provide restitution to former defendants like him.
BOX: You know, despite everything that I have experienced, lost, given up, I wouldn't change anything about it.
DREISBACH: Really?
BOX: Absolutely not.
DREISBACH: Even with everything - with the job loss...
BOX: No. Job loss...
DREISBACH: You would still do everything the same?
BOX: Everything. The only thing I would probably do different is maybe bring another GoPro and get some more footage. But ultimately, you know, I still believe, and I would say, I know that the election in 2020 wasn't clean. I believe that I was there doing what every American should have done.
DREISBACH: Jason Riddle used to think like Box. He pleaded guilty to storming the Capitol and chugging a bottle of wine inside. He's an alcoholic, but since he's stopped drinking, he's rethought his support for Trump, and he's one of the very few rioters to reject the pardon.
JASON RIDDLE: I can't accept. You know, this is - cops have died. Trump is promoting criminal behavior. That was a criminal act. January 6 was a crime. And I think it's going to result in more death, eventually. There's going to be another riot. Something's going to happen if you keep promoting these lies. That's what January 6 was. It was a result of his lies.
DREISBACH: Since the pardon, some other rioters have gotten into more legal trouble for allegedly molesting children, breaking and entering, and threatening to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. I asked the Trump White House about those cases. They said we were spreading left-wing talking points and that Trump gave pardons to people who were, quote, "abused by the Biden justice system and aggressively over prosecuted for political purposes."
Then there's Michael Fanone. He resigned from the D.C. police department after January 6. I sat down with him, and we watched his body cam from the riot together, including the moments when he was nearly killed.
How does it feel to watch that?
FANONE: You know, it makes me miss the job.
DREISBACH: Really?
FANONE: Yeah.
DREISBACH: Why?
FANONE: I mean, I loved being a cop. Yeah. You watch this now, and it's like, it's the last time I got to be a cop. Like, that's literally the last day of my career.
DREISBACH: I think a lot of people would be surprised to hear you say this is almost nostalgic, in a way, for you, given how it was probably the worst day of your career in policing.
FANONE: I mean, like, was January 6 traumatic? Yes. Was it more traumatic than other experiences in my career? I don't know. I mean, what was traumatic was everything that happened afterwards. You know, I've got a president that pardoned all the people that assaulted me, called them patriots. I get death threats every single [expletive] day. I lost my career. I lost my friends. I had my entire life turned upside down all because of me doing my job.
DREISBACH: Fanone told me he still talks about January 6, but not because he expects it will change anyone's mind. Instead, now it's for the future, for history.
Tom Dreisbach, NPR News.
KELLY: You can see all of NPR's reporting on January 6 at npr.org/J6archive. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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