‘F**k yourself,’ former police officer who was beaten during Jan. 6 riot tells U.S. lawmaker

Seated from right, former MPD officer Michael Fanone, former Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, former MPD officer Daniel Hodges, and former Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn, listen to former special counsel Jack Smith testify during a House Judiciary Committee hearing in Rayburn building on January 22. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

As Republican Rep. Troy Nehls attempted to place blame for the January 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Police officials and not on U.S. President Donald Trump, former Washington, D.C., police officer Michael Fanone — who was severely beaten by protestors that day — interrupted with a cough and a quick message.

The incident occurred during a Thursday hearing where Jack Smith, the former special prosecutor who led two failed prosecutions against Trump, publicly testified before the House Judiciary Committee.

“I can tell you gentlemen, that the fault does not lie with Donald Trump,” Nehls, of Texas, said, addressing several law enforcement officers attending the hearing who responded to the riot that day.

Nehls said the fault of the attack lies with “the U.S. Capitol leadership team.”

“We know they had the intelligence,” Nehls said before Fanone, after a loud cough, interrupted.

“F**k yourself,” Fanone, who was dragged out and beaten in a crowd of rioters during one of the most violent clashes that day, said loudly.

Nehls concluded: “There was going to be a high propensity for violence that day.”

Fanone sat in the audience during the hearing with three other officers deployed at the Capitol that day, Aquilino Gonell, Harry Dunn, and Daniel Hodges, each of whom have become Trump critics since the insurrection.

Smith, in his first public appearance before lawmakers, said he was “shocked” when he saw the attack on the Capitol.

He warned that there are potentially “catastrophic” ongoing threats to U.S. democracy because of the failure to hold Trump accountable for his “criminal” attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

“If we don’t hold people to account when they commit crimes, it sends a message that those crimes are okay, that our society accepts that … it can endanger our election process, it can endanger election workers, and ultimately our democracy,” Smith said.

By Holmes Lybrand, CNN