January 6th and the N-word that didn’t exist
United States Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn has been hailed as a hero for his actions on January 6, 2021 and his public statements since then. Earlier this year, President Joe Biden awarded him the Presidential Citizens Medal amid much fanfare. But the story he told, which initially made headlines, now appears to be an obviously refutable lie.
When Dunn claimed he was attacked “multiple times” during the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, nearly every media outlet repeated his claim without question. It plays a prominent role in his
new memoirs“Standing My Ground: A Capitol Police Officer’s Fight for Accountability and Good Trouble After Jan. 6,” published Tuesday by Hachette Books.
The origin story
Seemingly no other word in the English language—when spoken by anyone other than a black comedian or a rapper—evokes a deeply negative reaction. The use of the N-word is so taboo that if someone so much as quotes the word in a news story or interview, it must either be redacted (as is Blaze Media’s policy) or glossed over.
In “Standing My Ground,” Dunn recounts how he and another black officer were approached by BuzzFeed reporter Emmanuel Felton to tell their stories about that “harrowing day in which they were forced to endure racist insults — including repeated ones Insulting with the N-word.” as they attempted to carry out their mission to protect the Capitol building.”
Felton’s
Story was released on January 9, three days after the uprising. Dunn appears as an unnamed source in the article. According to Dunn’s BuzzFeed account:
“I sat down with one of my friends, another Black man, and tears were streaming down my face,” he said. “I said, ‘What the fuck, man? Is this America? What the hell just happened? I’m so sick and tired of this shit.’”
Soon he was screaming so that everyone in the rotunda, including his white colleagues, could hear what he had just been through.
“They are racist terrorists,” he shouted.
“I’ve been called 15 times today,” the veteran officer shouted to no one in the rotunda. “Trump did this and we have all these damn people in our department who voted for him. How the hell can you support him?”
“I cried for about 15 minutes and then just let it out.”
Dunn explains in his book how other Capitol Police officers saw enough detail in the BuzzFeed story to identify him as one of the unnamed sources. Dunn writes that he was afraid of being outed.
When Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) tweeted a quote from the article, Dunn said he contacted the congressman’s office and soon received a flood of media interview requests. A colleague introduced Dunn to influential whistleblower attorney Mark Zaid, who began negotiating media appearances so he could tell his story publicly.
A developing story
Dunn’s
first television appearance appeared on “Good Morning America” with ABC News chief correspondent Pierre Thomas on February 22, 2021.
Dunn told Thomas that a large group of protesters began talking to him. “They said Joe Biden didn’t win the election. And … no one voted for him,” he said. “So I took the bait and… OK… what about me? I voted for Joe Biden. Doesn’t my vote count?”
Dunn further described a couple in the crowd:
And his girlfriend was wearing a pink MAGA shirt. She said, “Hey! This n***** voted for Joe Biden, people! Hey! All! That n***** voted for Joe Biden!”…Everyone joined in.
After the Capitol was cleared of protesters, Dunn Thomas said he told a close friend, “I’ve been called a couple dozen times today…a couple dozen times.”
Dunn continued to tell variations of the story in numerous media appearances, FBI interviews and finally in a deposition before the House Select Committee on January 6, the first of his Hollywood-produced, televised prime-time hearings.
In the first of Dunn’s two known FBI statements, dated May 18, 2021, interviewers wrote regarding the N-word incident: “Dunn shared that he was verbally assaulted by a Hispanic woman in a pink t-shirt who “This apparently did be lumped in with the Oath Keepers.”
In a second FBI interview on August 16, 2021, the agent reported: “During this time, Officer Dunn was referred to as ‘N*****’ and other names. He didn’t believe it was the Oath Keepers who gave him those names.”
(Blaze Media acquired these two FBI “302” interview forms. Although they are marked “Unclassified,” they reportedly remain subject to a court protective order preventing their release.)
In Dunn’s first statement to a congressional subcommittee on July 27, 2021, he testified:
I’m a police officer and I keep politics out of my job. But under the circumstances, I replied, “Well, I voted for Joe Biden. Doesn’t my vote count? Am I nobody?”
This sparked a flood of racist epithets. A woman in a pink “MAGA” shirt yelled, “You heard, guys, that n***** voted for Joe Biden!” Then the crowd, maybe about twenty people, joined in and yelled, “Boo ! Holy crap!”
No one had ever – ever – called me a “n*****” while wearing a Capitol Police officer’s uniform. In the days following the attempted insurrection, other black officers told me their own stories of racial abuse on January 6th. One officer told me he had never been called a “n*****” in his entire forty years of life. ” in his face and that this series ended on January 6th.
Another black officer later said he was confronted at the Capitol by insurrectionists who told him, “Put your gun away and we’ll show you what an idiot you really are!”
In one
Podcast interview With Michael Barbaro of the New York Times, Dunn embellished his story even further:
And then – and then the girl said: “Do you hear that? That N-word voted for Joe Biden, people.” And then all 20, 30, 40, 50 people that were there said, “That N-word voted for Joe Biden.” Boo!”
On page 82 of the advance copy of Dunn’s book purchased by Blaze Media, he gives a similar account of the lady in the “pink MAGA shirt” being racist. But on page 157, Dunn writes that the chant was led by a woman wearing a “pink MAGA hat.”
Despite these and other minor inconsistencies in Dunn’s narrative, the story’s biggest problem is that in what many consider to be the most videotaped event in history, not a single piece of evidence – video or audio – has emerged that proves this would confirm a racially motivated incident ever took place.
Story from the tape
In the two and a half years since the events of January 6, 2021, during which tens of thousands of hours of audio were captured and analyzed from open source cell phone videos and DC Metro Police body-worn cameras, no one has produced recorded evidence that would corroborate Dunn’s story . There is also no evidence that other police officers were victims of racist epithets and insults.
That’s the case with a Capitol video surveillance video now being analyzed by Blaze Media and several other media outlets
not Include audio. But the video also appears to lack any visual evidence confirming the event described by Dunn at the time and place he claimed. In fact, the entirety of the extensive hours of video examined by Blaze Media reveal no such event. That includes the end of Dunn’s day, when he is said to have broken down crying in the Capitol Rotunda. Instead, he can be clearly seen talking to numerous colleagues – not only without tears, but sometimes smiling and using cell phone videos.
Analysts at Blaze Media spent hours combing through the video footage, looking for anyone — men or women — wearing a “pink MAGA shirt” inside the Capitol. Based on the many camera sources available, we can conclusively report that a woman wearing a pink MAGA t-shirt is never seen near or near Dunn. We have not found a single shirt matching this description worn by anyone in the building.
The Sedition Hunters, a
self-described “Global community of open source intelligence investigators (OSINT) working together to help the US FBI and Washington DC Capitol Police find those who committed crimes at the Capitol on January 6th” had unprecedented Access to open source video footage from January 6th. This group of left-wing activists also failed to produce evidence that the N-word was used against Dunn or other black police officers that day.
Given the tens of thousands of hours of video and audio recordings from January 6, if any protester had spoken out that day, this evidence would almost certainly have already been released. The idea that “20, 30, 40, 50 people” chanted the word is absurd at first glance.
If such evidence existed, it would be “the N-word heard around the world,” repeated endlessly by every major news outlet in every story about January 6, in service of a left-wing narrative about the violence This day was not only fueled by President Trump’s incitement, but was also a demonstration of MAGA white supremacy.
Nobody believes it
At
a current episode of BlazeTV’s “Fearless with Jason Whitlock,” former Capitol Police Lt. Tarik Johnson – also black – asked about his experiences on January 6th.
“Did anyone accuse you of racial slurs on January 6th?”
“None,” Johnson replied.
Whitlock asked, “Have you heard of any other officers who may have had this experience?”
Johnson: “No.”
Johnson told Whitlock that the two Oath Keepers who helped him go in and rescue 16 of his Capitol Police colleagues were “both white.”
In the first of my several
personal interviews Along with Johnson, he was accompanied by an unnamed, now-retired black USCP officer. I asked them about the story Dunn had repeated so many times.
The unnamed retired officer stopped me. “Are you asking me if anyone called Dunn that day?”
“Yes.”
“That never happened,” he answered firmly.
This is just the first of them
lots of obvious lies in Dunn’s new book, many of which he also asserted in sworn testimony in court and before Congress. Much of what Officer Dunn falsely said or embellished that day was used in federal court to send people to federal prison. Similar to Special Agent David Lazarus’ obviously perjured testimony, much of what Dunn said can be easily refuted by examining the video evidence that Congress and the Capitol Hill Police are still withholding from Blaze Media and the American public.
The American people must demand his release.
