In his testimony to the House committee investigating the attack, US Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn addressed the violence and torrent of racist abuse he endured while holding back a mob that broke into the halls of Congress on 6 January, 2021.
He shared other details from the attack as a key witness in the case against five members of far-right anti-government Oath Keepers group, whose members were filmed joining the mobs breaking into the US Capitol and confronting Officer Dunn.
Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and four others connected to the group face charges of seditious conspiracy for their roles in the attack, spending weeks organising their members and associates for an “attack” fuelled by baseless conspiracy theories that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump, according to federal prosecutors.
When prosecutors on Monday showed the courtroom video footage of Officer Dunn’s interactions with members of the Oath Keepers, he testified that the group failed to support law enforcement and ignored his warnings that they were endangering officers’ lives.
“Dozens of officers down. We are taking them out on stretchers,” Mr Dunn can be heard saying on the video as he guarded a stairwell leading to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. “Y’all are f****** us up.”
Under question from Oath Keepers attorneys, he said: “They tried to get past me. And I stopped them. They didn’t. I did.”
Mr Dunn is entering his 15th year with the federal law enforcement agency. He arrived at the Capitol on 6 January at 6.45am and left shortly after midnight that day, he told the court on 31 October.
Oath Keepers attorneys have argued that the group was in Washington DC to provide support to Donald Trump and guard certain points at the Capitol. Lawyers for the group have suggested that Officer Dunn had previously told the FBI that members were helping law enforcement, but video footage shown to the court from the day before the attack shows him saying, “Oath Keepers? What the f*** are the Oath Keepers?”
When he told the Oath Keepers surrounding him that officers were hurt, the group appeared “taken aback, almost humanized for a minute,” according to Officer Dunn.
“I told them that there were officers getting the s*** kicked out of them. That there were officers down, officers hurt,” he said.
Attorneys for Oath Keepers members pressed Officer Dunn over the use of profanity in the Capitol, a line of attack ridiculed by Assistant US Attorney Alexandra Hughes.
Officer Dunn said the scale of rioters in the halls of Congress was “unprecedented.”
Asked what would have been helpful to law enforcement that day, Officer Dunner replied: “Leaving the building.”
