Washington Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone said Wednesday he’s been targeted by pro-Trump radicals over his appearance at the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Fanone played back an anonymous obscenity-peppered phone message he received overnight that derided him as a traitor and accused him of somehow staging the Capitol riots.
“This is what happens when you tell the truth in Trump’s America,” Fanone, a 20-year veteran cop, told CNN. “I’m in good company.”
Fanone said a big chunk of the American public has been successfully gaslighted by right-wing lawmakers and media figures into believing a different reality about the storming of the Capitol.
“The rhetoric being utilized by our lawmakers and also the entertainment media hosts is leading people to a different set of facts which they operate under,” he said. “In that bizarro world, I’m a crisis actor ... and you shouldn’t believe your eyes or ears.”
The officer’s distinctive beard and tattoos make him perhaps the most recognizable of the four cops who testified at the committee’s opening hearing.
He said he “went to hell and back” batting violent insurrectionists that day and suffered severe long-term injuries.
Fanone insisted the shameful tactics would not deter him from speaking out about the attack on the Capitol or those he says are responsible for engineering it.
“The facts are the facts,” Fanone said. “I’m not a crisis actor. That day was as traumatic as it looked whether you look at my body-worn video camera or other video.”
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