So far, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has arrested 570 of Donald Trump’s January 6 “army.” That leaves about 300 more insurgents on the loose. They have come from nearly every state in the Union, but only 170 of them are charged with assaulting or interfering with the Capitol and the D.C. Metropolitan police officers as they tried to defend our democracy. So what are these worst of the worst rioters like?
Nine of the defendants stormed the police at a tunnel at the building’s lower west terrace the mob. In the Department of Justice (DOJ)’s superseding indictment, Steven Cappuccio has been charged, along with the others with up to 53 charges. These include assaulting an officer with a deadly weapon and robbery.
One of those officers, D.C. Metropolitan police officer Daniel Hodges gave earth-shattering testimony before Congress’ January 6 Select Committee. He described Cappuccio’s attack on him, (shown as “D.H.” in the court documents), The Forbes magazine reported.
Officer Hodges said Cappuccio, 57, stole his own baton and beat him with it.
Federal prosecutors accused the Universal City, Texas of attacking Hodges. The officer described the vicious attack:
‘He never uttered any words I recognized but opted instead for guttural screams.’
‘I remember him foaming at the mouth. He also put his cell phone in his mouth so he had both hands free to assault me.’
The FBI had videos of Cappuccio trying to rip off Hodges’ gas mask. Later, Officer Hodges was crushed between two doors, and the video showed him bleeding from his mouth. His skull was injured, his lip ruptured:
‘[Cappucio] bashed me in the face and head” with his baton.’
Nine of the defendants have been indicted and charged with allegedly joining in the tunnel attack. Ohio resident Dave Mehaffie, known as the “#TunnelCommander,” was in a video giving other members of the mob orders, according to HuffPost.
Donald Trump invited thousands of his supporters to Washington, ginned them up into an enraged mob, then let them loose on our greatest symbol of democracy, our Capitol Building. He told them:
‘We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore…I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.’
‘All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they’re doing. And stolen by the fake news media. That’s what they’ve done and what they’re doing. We will never give up, we will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved.’
Then, Trump turned on his Vice President Mike Pence:
‘ I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We’re supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our constitution.’
NPR provided a transcript of Trump’s January 6 speech.
Court documents all from the Department of Justice (DOJ).
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