During a discussion on MSNBC with host Jonathan Capehart, Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn spoke to the ongoing ramifications of the violence of January 6, 2021. In the near future — meaning next year, Americans will again head to the polls or cast their absentee ballots to decide on a slew of critical races from which the winners will be able to exert close control over elections and democracy’s basic functioning — and Trump is expected to be on November’s ballots.
Dunn appeared on MSNBC on the occasion of him releasing a new book. He was among the officers who helped defend the Capitol against rioting Trump supporters on January 6, and he told Capehart what he hopes to see. “I guess it’s a deterrent to make sure that whoever did it or anything never does it again. It deters them from doing it again,” Dunn said of his ideal for the path ahead towards further accountability for those behind the events of January 6. “The problem is that Donald Trump doesn’t think he did anything wrong. […] An idea created January 6, whether it was Donald Trump or another individual. Those people that were there thought that they were right. And that’s the problem.”
“The citizens who have their duty — it’s their job to hold those individuals accountable,” Dunn argued, referring to the leaders who still try and downplay the realities of not just the violence of January 6 but also the existential threat to democracy that it represented. He indicated that what he meant by that description was the idea of voting those figures out of office.
Much of the House GOP still seems at ease with election conspiracy theories and denial, having recently backed Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) for House Speaker, though he eventually left the race after three failures on the House floor. Jordan helped spread conspiracy theories about the last presidential race and helped lead the charge in Congress against certifying its full results. See Dunn’s MSNBC interview below:
