Michael Fanone, who was a police officer in Washington, D.C., when the Trump-incited mob attacked the Capitol early in 2021, where he was among the law enforcement personnel injured, wrote — and this week helped deliver — a letter to prominent Republican members in the incoming House majority demanding action against political violence and the threat of it.
Over 1,000 others signed the letter, including veterans, active-duty service members, and members of military families, and it was delivered Wednesday to prominent Republicans including Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, Elise Stefanik, James Comer, and Marjorie Taylor Greene — all of whom are either set to help lead House Republicans in the new Congress or are particularly prominent members of that broader group. Footage was available of Fanone personally dropping off the letter at a Capitol Hill office for Greene. According to a copy of the letter made publicly available by the group Courage for America, a veterans organization formed after the 2022 midterm elections, the missive asked for its recipients to “Issue a public and unwavering statement condemning political violence in all of its forms” and “Promise to hold members of your conference accountable for endorsing violence or espousing violent rhetoric towards those who disagree with them politically.”
Although the Capitol riot is what will soon be two years in the past, the overall threat of political violence has not vanished, exemplified by incidents ranging from the physical attack on Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s husband, at a California residence to the recent arrests of a pair of individuals plotting the murder of law enforcement personnel ostensibly involved in building the criminal case connected to the Capitol riot against one of them. There was even an attack on an FBI office in Ohio by an armed Trump supporter who was later shot dead by police in an incident that followed the FBI descending on the former president’s southern Florida resort called Mar-a-Lago. And Trump, of course, is resisting sticking to any kind of systematic condemnation of the threat. He has pushed for all those detained in connection to the riot to be released and discussed issuing pardons for rioters if he regains the presidency, helping lead Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) to characterize the former president as still providing aid to the insurrectionists.
