Capitol Police were sacrificial pawns on Jan. 6: ‘They didn’t give a s**t about what happened’



In preparation for the first installment of Blaze Media’s three-part mini-documentary series, “A Day in the Life of Harry Dunn,” we decided to update readers on how we reached this point in our “Truth About January 6” series.

I had been writing about January 6 for nearly two and a half years before becoming a correspondent with Blaze Media. As a result, many of our readers may be unfamiliar with the background stories that led to our major revelations about the trial perjuries of Capitol Police Special Agent David Lazarus and Officer Harry Dunn. Our reports also exposed corruption within the leadership of the United States Capitol Police.

My interest in the Capitol Police began when I first witnessed the violence on the lower west terrace of the Capitol Building on January 6. Through my camera lens, I captured the fear in their eyes — not just from the attacks by a small group of violent provocateurs but from the overwhelming sight of thousands of protesters advancing on their position. The police were clearly caught off guard.

But why? Were they unaware of the scheduled marches and legally permitted protests on the Capitol grounds that day?

I needed to find the answers to these questions, and that curiosity sparked what has now become a three-and-a-half-year investigation into the inner workings of the Capitol Police.

No ordinary day

When I first met former Capitol Police Lieutenant Tarik Johnson, I told him that I had previously written about how he and his fellow officers were set up as “sacrificial pawns” on January 6. He pointed his finger at me and said, “That’s exactly right. They didn’t give a s**t about what happened to us that day.”

Now, imagine being a Capitol Police officer showing up to work on January 6, 2021, expecting a normal day at the office. Whether you were a rookie or had 20 years of experience with the agency — regardless of your specialized training and position — many officers had spent years performing what amounted to the duties of a glorified tour guide for VIP visitors and general tourists at the nation’s seat of government.

That’s an oversimplification, as the Capitol Police are made up of various specialized units, including long-gun-certified officers, a civil disturbance unit, the criminal investigation squad, the intelligence unit, dignitary protection, a SWAT team, the hazardous devices team, and several others.

Why didn’t the Capitol Police frontline officers know what was coming their way?

Skipping ahead to the initial breach of the west-side barricades — where Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards was knocked unconscious after being shoved down by the first violent perpetrators, hitting her head on the concrete steps — now imagine being one of the few dozen Capitol Police officers ordered to respond, redeploy, and defend the Capitol’s lower west terrace against the initial agitators and provocateurs. Many supposed protesters arrived wearing gas masks, carrying blunt instruments, and holding canisters of various types of pepper spray. And who knows what else might have been concealed under their thick winter clothing?

You’ve heard over Capitol Police radio that unexpected visitors have already overrun outer barricades. They’re now pushing and pulling against the barricade line you just arrived to defend. Some rioters are breaking apart permanent black-metal fencing, turning the pieces into clubs and projectile spears.

You’ve arrived on the battle line without protective gear — no helmet, eye protection, or gas mask. Still, your job is to prevent further incursion toward the Capitol Building, where Congress and the vice president of the United States are currently in session to certify the Electoral College vote.

Already outnumbered by both peaceful protesters and violent agitators, you look over the crowd and see thousands more protesters marching toward your position, their intentions unknown.

As you defend the third, hastily assembled bike rack barricade line, you're being shoved, hit with flagpoles and broken pieces of fencing, and assaulted with pepper spray. You have no idea whether the thousands approaching your position also intend violence or carry more dangerous weapons.

You might rightly assume you may never go home to your family again. Tarik Johnson told me exactly that. During the initial chaos and violence on January 6, Johnson called his wife to say he might not make it home alive.

Video verification

Two years later, many of my initial impressions were challenged by new and increasingly available evidence. For example, on the evening of Jan. 6, after returning to my Arlington, Virginia, hotel room, I posted a video on YouTube during which I said I had witnessed the majority of the violence being committed by Trump supporters. After returning home, I spent five days conducting a frame-by-frame analysis of my own footage, taken from the Capitol’s west terrace battle line and through the Capitol building.

During that video review, I repeatedly found myself asking, “Who is that?”

By the time I published my first story about what I witnessed that day, all my initial preconceptions were challenged. I even adopted a new life rule: “I’ll never again believe anything I don't see with my own eyes ... but even then, consult the videotape.”

Our eyes can deceive us during a chaotic, violent event. That's why every law enforcement officer knows that a dozen eyewitnesses to a violent crime will give a dozen different accounts of what happened. Without ample experience in such events, the shock of unexpected violence makes people's minds register and process the episode in various and often contradictory ways.

I now know — beyond a reasonable doubt — that some of those frontline agitators and provocateurs, who I initially assumed were all Trump supporters, were anything but.

Right-wing militias were present. Left-wing anarchists and Antifa? Possibly. I definitely observed crowd manipulation tactics from professional provocateurs experienced in inciting violence and coordinating the movements of large groups.

Do I know for certain whom these provocateurs worked for? Not entirely, but our understanding is growing.

Secret commandos on scene

Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael Stenger, in his final testimony before Congress on February 23, 2021, stated: “There is an opportunity to learn lessons from the events of January 6. Investigations should be considered as to funding and travel of what appears to be professional agitators.”

During the January 2023 trial of Richard “Bigo” Barnett, who posed with his feet on Nancy Pelosi’s desk, defense attorney Bradford Geyer directly asked Capitol Police Captain Carneysha Mendoza whether the provocateurs she observed on January 6 operated as “highly trained violent people who work and coordinate together.” Mendoza confirmed, “Yes.”

In the lead-up to my second story about January 6 — published on February 24, 2021 — my investigations led me to discover and report that several federal agencies, including Army special forces operatives, were embedded in the crowd that day. This was later confirmed by a Newsweek story on January 3, 2022, headlined “Secret Commandos with Shoot-to-Kill Authority Were at the Capitol.”

Newsweek revealed that the mission of those tactical units from virtually every three-letter federal agency, along with “the role that the military played in this highly classified operation,” is “still unknown.” Yet those special operators and tactical forces were “seconded” to the FBI.

If the FBI had advance intelligence substantial enough to warrant deploying such a highly trained and well-armed secret force, why didn’t the Capitol Police frontline officers also know what was coming their way?

Or did only certain individuals within the Capitol Police leadership know what was coming that day?

Damning video exposes former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn's tortured relationship with Jan. 6 truth



Former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn prides himself on telling the truth.

When it comes to January 6, though, he and the truth often appear to be at odds.

That is the powerful contention in a new Blaze Media video production, “A Day in the Life of Harry Dunn: Part One — A Leisurely Pace,” streaming on BlazeTV and social media.

The video chronicles some of the tales told by the most famous police officer on Jan. 6 — and then reveals what really happened.

Steve Baker, a Blaze News investigative reporter who researched and narrated the production, said Dunn’s carefully crafted story — told before Congress, on network talk shows, and in his best-selling book — is nothing but fiction.

“Everything he did to establish his fame was done deceptively,” Baker said, recalling Dunn’s dramatic retelling of a briefing he attended at the Capitol early on Jan. 6. It was a meeting that security video proves never took place.

“When one opens their own narrative with so much detail about the time, the location, the content of the meeting that never happened,” Baker said in the film, “well, then everything else he says about January 6 must be called into question.”

'Harry rose to fame based on deception and lies.'

Just as more doubts began to emerge about his truthfulness in 2024, Dunn retired from the Capitol Police. After a losing bid for the U.S. House of Representatives, Dunn joined the presidential campaigns of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

“I don’t think it’s a stretch of the imagination, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration, to say that we are one election away from the extinction of democracy as we know it,” Dunn told CBS News when he announced his bid for Congress.

During a presidential election panel discussion in Michigan in August, Dunn said news accounts undersold the amount of violence he and other officers experienced on Jan. 6 at the hands of Trump supporters.

“The violence that you saw was probably 10, 100 times worse than what the cameras portrayed it to be,” Dunn said in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn laughs with President Joe Biden before Dunn is awarded a Presidential Citizens Medal at the White House on Jan. 6, 2023.Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Dunn was not the target of violence on Jan. 6. The Blaze Media investigation showed how Dunn’s dramatic tales about his actions on Jan. 6 don’t match thousands of hours of Capitol Police security video that Baker reviewed. Security footage shows Dunn’s stories simply don’t match the evidence.

Baker got the initial idea for the video while listening to Dunn testify for the prosecution in the first Oath Keepers trial in October 2022. The details Dunn shared not only didn’t add up, they were different from what he told the FBI in his first meeting with agents in 2021, Baker said.

Baker discovered that Capitol Police Special Agent David Lazarus could not have witnessed an alleged confrontation Dunn had with the Oath Keepers. Dunn testified under oath that Lazarus was present near the Small House Rotunda with the Oath Keepers. But at the time Dunn claimed it took place, Lazarus was on the other side of the Capitol.

As Baker dug into more of Dunn’s public statements and media appearances, other problems became apparent.

Included among them was Dunn’s contention that he engaged in “hand-to-hand combat” with rioters and that fellow officers were carried away on stretchers during the worst violence of Jan. 6.

Then there was Dunn’s most widely repeated story of a group of 50 white-supremacist Trump supporters chanting the N-word when he told them he voted for Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

A review of hundreds of hours of footage from that day, tracking Dunn's whereabouts, did not uncover any evidence that any such "hand-to-hand combat" or racially charged interactions occurred.

“The key to the story is that Harry rose to fame based on deception and lies,” Baker said.

Dunn testified under oath before the now-defunct Jan. 6 Select Committee. He made countless television appearances on CNN, MSNBC, and the ABC talk show “The View.” He received a Presidential Citizens Medal from Biden at the White House in 2023.

Dunn’s 2023 memoir, “Standing My Ground,” received widespread media attention. Baker said the book, much like Dunn’s other public testimonies, is “a gold mine of lies.”

Capitol Police and Dunn did not respond to Blaze News' request for comment.

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Did Blaze Media just catch a J6 ‘hero’ cop in a web of lies?



Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn was heralded as a hero for his bravery and courage on January 6th. Biden even awarded him the Presidential Citizens Medal, and several media outlets invited him on their shows to share his harrowing account of that fateful day.

But as more evidence is unearthed, it’s looking more and more like Dunn’s testimony, which he gave under oath, as well as the recount he gives in his new memoir, are “obviously disprovable" lies, says Glenn Beck.

For example, “Dunn alleged that he was called the N-word numerous times during the riot at the Capitol on January 6th, [and] almost the entirety of the media repeated his claim without any question,” Beck explains.

However, Blaze Media has acquired access to the J6 footage, although the tapes have not been approved for release, and can confirm that there is no evidence that racial slurs were hurled at Dunn on January 6th.

“This is the most video-recorded event in history, [and] not a single piece of evidence, video or audio, has even emerged to confirm that such a racially charged incident ever took place,” explains Glenn.

“In the two and a half years since the events, with tens of thousands of hours of audio taken and analyzed from open-source cell phone video and D.C. Metro Police body-worn cameras, nobody has produced recorded evidence to corroborate Dunn’s story,” he continues.

Further, “the Capitol rotunda closed-circuit TV video” has also been analyzed, and it “does not include any audio” and the “video also appears to lack any visual evidence confirming the event as Dunn described it.”

What the videos do include, however, is footage of Dunn “talking to numerous fellow officers ... sometimes smiling and sharing a cell phone video,” contrary to his claims that he sat down and cried due to the racial abuse he suffered.

One particular individual, a woman in a pink MAGA shirt who, according to Dunn’s story, called him a “f***ing N-word,” cannot be found in any of the J6 footage either.

“Analysts for Blaze Media have spent hours poring over the video recordings, looking for any individual, male or female, wearing a pink MAGA shirt inside the Capitol building, [and] we can report conclusively, based on the many camera sources available, that a woman in a pink MAGA T-shirt is never seen near or in Dunn’s vicinity,” confirms Glenn.

“Blaze Media did not find a single shirt fitting that description worn by anyone inside the building.”

And if that wasn’t convincing enough, the Sedition Hunters, which is a “a group of left-leaning activist researchers” who “assist the U.S., FBI, and Washington, D.C., Capitol Police to find those who committed crimes on January 6 ... has also failed to produce evidence of the N-word being used against Dunn or any other black police officers that day.”

The question now is: will Dunn be forced to contend with the fact that there is no evidence to authenticate his testimony — the same testimony that landed many people behind bars?


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