Politico | US police officers label Capitol rioters ‘terrorists’ in select committee hearing
- During Tuesday’s hearing, the officers detailed attacks by rioters and hand-to-hand combat on January 6 as they defended the Capitol building
- ‘There was an attack carried out on January 6 and a hitman sent them,’ said officer Harry Dunn, referring to allegations that Donald Trump incited the riots
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Maeve Sheehey and Nicholas Wu on politico.com on July 27, 2021.
Daniel Hodges, one of the police officers who testified at the first January 6 select committee meeting on Tuesday, called those who breached the Capitol that day “terrorists”, rejecting the notion floated by congressman Andrew Clyde that the insurrection amounted to typical “tourist visit”.
Asked how he felt about Clyde’s description of the deadly riot as a “tourist visit”, Hodges said, “if that’s what American tourists are like, I can see why foreign countries don’t like American tourists”.
There was some brief laughter in the committee room after Hodges’ comment, though the limited capacity of the committee room meant that it was mostly staff and lawmakers who laughed.
Hodges, a Metropolitan Police officer who was among those attacked by the pro-Trump insurrectionists at the Capitol, acknowledged that defenders of the rioters and allies of Donald Trump might object to the term “terrorists”. But the label was an accurate one, Hodges said before reading aloud the definition of domestic terrorism as outlined in federal law.
