Michael Fanone reflects on Trump’s return on January 6th.

Four years ago, then-outgoing President Donald Trump stood on the Ellipse on the National Mall and declared to his supporters that “we will not take back our government through weakness” and that they “must fight like hell.” “There will be no more countries.”

Soon after, rioters descended on lawmakers certifying the results of the 2020 election won by Joe Biden. Michael PanoneThen a Metropolitan Police officer in the District of Columbia, he came under vicious attack while defending the U.S. Capitol. he is Electric shocks to the neck with a Taser; He was kicked and beaten. His radio was torn from his body. His badge was taken off him. A group of men assaulted him, five at a time. Fanone suffered a heart attack and lost consciousness. At one point during the assault, he pleaded with Trump supporters to be considerate of his children.

Immediately after the uprising on January 6, 2021, Fanone left the police force. He has spent most of the last four years warning: public Indifference to insurrection will spell the death of democracy as Americans know it. He, like many others, has dedicated himself to spreading this warning, watching legal attempt after legal attempt to hold Trump accountable for his role in the events of January 6 evaporated.

This experience caused Fanone to lose trust in his fellow police officers, the entire justice system, or the American public.

“There is no doubt that he incited an insurrection, tried to deceive the American people and overthrow democracy,” Fanone said in a phone interview with HuffPost ahead of the fourth anniversary of the Capitol riot.

“I don’t believe we live in a democratic society anymore,” Fanone said. “I believe democracy in this country is dead. When the Supreme Court gave the President of the United States immunity for official acts and then failed to define what the fuck official acts were, democracy died.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States last July ruled that prosecution is impossible as long as something can be shaded as “official” conduct.

judgment obliterated A key part of the criminal indictment filed against Trump on January 6 by then-Special Counsel Jack Smith. And Trump’s victory in November means he will likely never face federal indictment.

Shortly after the election, Smith dismissed the case without prejudice. This meant that theoretically, he could come back to life someday. But Fanon’s faith in the judicial system had already been shattered. He called Attorney General Merrick Garland “a complete coward.”

“Listen. People say I’m naive or I don’t know how this works. But I worked as a police officer for 20 years. Not only was I a cop, I was also a cop in Washington, DC. Our prosecutors were federal prosecutors. I worked at (the Department of Justice) every day for 20 years. I know exactly how those organs and tissues work. “The decision not to pursue an investigation into Trump was all political,” Fanone said. “The investigation should have started on January 7, 2021.”

The Justice Department declined to comment, but prosecutors worked to investigate Trump allies in the immediate aftermath of the insurrection and spent months and years battling Trump insiders over executive privilege and trying to decrypt the encrypted cellphones of key figures. Even after Smith’s appointment in November 2022 and Trump’s indictment in August 2023, the president’s legal team worked persistently and successfully to delay the process.

Fanone saw all this as inappropriate and argued that even Smith’s appointment was unnecessary “except in the field of optics.”

“If we are to maintain or restore credibility in the Department of Justice, it must do its job, not politics. “Garland will go down in history as the man who played politics and lost, and failed to prosecute a president who incited the insurrection we all saw on television,” he said. He said Trump’s victory in November felt like a referendum on Jan. 6.

“I think this election, at least in part, was a referendum on January 6th, a referendum on me and my honesty and the things I said. And the American people said, ‘We don’t care,’ and I mean they don’t care.” It’s not going to describe people in a big way – because most people are only interested in stories to read, they just don’t care about January 6th.”

Fanone said the only people today focused on Jan. 6 seem to be members of the “tin hat brigade,” who claim the insurrection was “some big government conspiracy.”

“I don’t think there are that many Americans, but there are a lot of crazy jobs out there,” he said. “But the majority of Americans have the stance of, ‘If it doesn’t affect me, I don’t care.’”

Panone has been traveling the country for the past four years. “That’s been my experience in every city,” he said.

“People were confused because they had no idea what happened on January 6th. Listen, I didn’t watch cable news before January 6th, but I thought the massive attack on the Capitol would at least affect all Americans. But that wasn’t the case.”

President Trump has promised to pardon the Jan. 6 rioters when he returns to the Oval Office, but it is unclear whether he will grant pardons across the board or on a case-by-case basis. Only those who have committed non-violent or misdemeanors can potentially be forgiven.

The idea that the Jan. 6 rioters will now be pardoned gives pause to an already furious Fanone.

He has already paid a personal cost for his outspokenness and fears pardoned rebels could threaten his family. Fanone’s mother was assaulted at her home in May, hours after he made critical comments about Trump. He was harassed so much that he stopped reporting it to the authorities. He lost his faith.

“To be honest, I’ve spent 20 years and the last four years, especially the last four years, not really giving a fuck, and now I don’t give a fuck. However, I am concerned, given the fact that many of those imprisoned, especially those who committed acts of violence, have made direct threats to me. And I know from past experience that the Justice Department, the FBI, and local law enforcement do not monitor such threats. And don’t worry about them.

“My experience with law enforcement over the past year has been terrible. Most threats against me and my family are not investigated, to the point where they are not even reported. I don’t want anything to do with the police, and neither does my family.”

A month ago, he said, someone threw a brick at his mother’s house. Panone said there was another incident where her mother was raking leaves in the front yard when a man “pulled up and threw a bag of poop at her.”

Ultimately, Fanone said his experience as a police officer taught him that responsibility is what really keeps people in order. He said the threat of jail or a financial fine can be a meaningful deterrent.

“But now we have a situation where the party is openly saying, ‘With us, there’s no accountability,’” he said. That’s evidenced by the promise of forgiveness: Be a Trump supporter and “we’ve got your back.” Fanone said, “Well, that’s not fucking Law and Order.”

The country’s judicial system had problems before Trump and well before Jan. 6, he said.

“I always felt it was a classic. If you have the resources to defend yourself, you have a better chance of getting out of an incident. Damn, look at Donald Trump. He can sue forever. But this is the first time I’ve seen someone so openly mock the system. So the threat of personal liability still exists for those who oppose Trump and what he stands for. But who knows who doesn’t oppose him?” he said

Now Fanone is looking for work and said he often hears that he is a hero and that he is loved.

But he said he also heard from prospective employers that they didn’t want any “potential disruption” or “fallout” and were worried they, too, would be targeted simply for hiring him.

Thinking about the future, Fanone said, “I don’t think too highly of myself in imparting life lessons to the American people.” But he can share without filters what he’s learned over the past four years.

“I no longer believe in American exceptionalism. That was certainly the case before January 6th. That is no longer the case. I think there are a lot of decent Americans. I served with them in police departments, I know them in the military and in other areas, and I am deeply committed to this country and its Constitution, and to just being a decent human being. But I don’t think that’s a common trait of the average American. “I think the average American is cowardly and selfish.”