A former Washington, D.C., police officer who was nearly killed on Jan. 6 claims South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham told cops they should have killed Donald Trump loyalists who raided the U.S. Capitol.
“You guys should have shot them all in the head,” officer Michael Fanone recalls Graham telling him in a new book obtained by Politico.
Graham was clearly upset the day Trump supporters interrupted the certification of the 2020 election in which President Joe Biden defeated the incumbent.
“All I can say is count me out!” Graham said on the Senate floor following the invasion. “Enough is enough.”
Fanone, who was dragged into a sea of MAGA assailants while defending the Capitol, was beaten by a crowd where he said he heard at least one rioter say “kill him with his own gun.” His book “Hold the Line” details events surrounding that experience, which also resulted in a Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt, being fatally shot.
“We gave you guys guns, and you should have used them,” Fanone recalls Graham saying.
The 42-year-old D.C. native said Graham made his remarks during a May 2021 discussion where Fanone and other officers urged Republican senators to get behind a bipartisan commission to investigate the attack on Capitol Hill.
The 67-year-old lawmaker reportedly told badly outnumbered officers he doesn’t understand why they didn’t use lethal force against their attackers.
Fanone testified before the House Select Committee formed to investigate the Capitol attack. That committee will convene again next Thursday, Oct. 13, to present its findings to the public.
According to Politico, Fanone writes that as a “lifelong Republican,” he found it “shocking” and “disgraceful” that some GOP leaders worked to undermine what he experienced on that deadly day. Fanone left his job in law enforcement less than a year after the attack on the Capitol.
He told CNN in May 2021 “I see a whole team of doctors” to treat him for physical and psychological harm brought on by the attack.
“Some days I’m good to go,” he told host Don Lemon. “Other days, or other times within the same day, I’m just broken.”
Fanone said he also relies on fellow officers who survived the attack for emotional support.
Graham, who spent eight years in the House of Representatives, was elected to the Senate for the fourth time in 2020.
