Body camera footage released Wednesday night shows a D.C. cop being attacked during the fatal Capitol riot, which occurred during the final month of Trump’s presidency.
The footage was released during an episode of CNN Tonight With Don Lemon, with the host providing some context for the footage—noting that the video comes from DC Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone’s body camera—while noting that it shows the seriousness of a day that many Republicans seem hell-bent on downplaying.
“This is difficult to watch but it is the truth of what happened that day,” Lemon said Wednesday night.
Fanone was tased amid the Capitol riot and later went unconscious. At one point in the newly released footage, you can hear a Capitol rioter bragging “I got one!” while Fanone screams. At another point, Fanone tells the aggressive crowd he has children and urges them to let him go.
On Wednesday, several Republicans used their time in a House Oversight Committee hearing to defend those who participated in the Capitol riot. The hearing was held, per chairperson Carolyn Maloney, to ensure that Congress could find out why federal officials “failed to coordinate an effective and timely response” to the riot that was preceded by false claims of election tampering.
In February, Trump—alongside Rudy Giuliani, Proud Boys, and Oath Keepers—was named in a federal lawsuit filed by the NAACP and the civil rights law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll.
“Donald Trump needs to be held accountable for deliberately inciting and colluding with white supremacists to stage a coup, in his continuing efforts to disenfranchise African American voters,” Derrick Johnson, the president and CEO of the NAACP, said at the time.
