'The defendant you testified against is being released': Ex-Capitol cop shares DOJ alerts

21 January

One former U.S. Capitol Police Department officer is sharing automated alerts he recently received from the Department of Justice (DOJ) letting him know that participants in the January 6 insurrection who personally attacked him had been released from prison.

Aquilino Gonell, who was a Capitol police sergeant during the January 6 attack, recently shared a screenshot of his call log with his former colleague Harry Dunn, who posted the screenshot to Bluesky. The call log shows nearly a dozen automated calls from the DOJ, which tell the recipient: "The defendant you testified against is being released from the department of corrections."

"Each defendant assaulted him," Dunn wrote.

Shortly after he was sworn in on Monday, President Donald Trump announced he was pardoning approximately 1,500 people who had been either charged or convicted in relation to the January 6, 2021 siege of the United States Capitol. This included people who brought weapons to the Capitol and assaulted police officers in an effort to violently stop Congress' certification of Electoral College votes for then-President-elect Joe Biden.

Trump's wave of pardons even some who were convicted of seditious conspiracy — the most serious charge handed down to a handful of defendants. Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison, and Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who was serving an 18-year prison sentence, were both among those pardoned.

Officer Dunn and Sgt. Gonell were both pardoned by Biden in the final hours of his presidency, which he said was necessary to protect them from "revenge" at the hands of the incoming administration. On Bluesky, Gonell wrote that he was "just doing my job and fulfilling my oath to defend this country," and thanked Biden for "upholding our nation's democracy" and "issuing preemptive pardons for me and my colleagues."

"It should not have resulted in this, but this is what it has come to," Gonell wrote.

Click here to view Dunn's post on Bluesky.

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