'The truth still matters': Why one Jan. 6 officer plans to watch Congress certify Trump's win

Justin Papp, CQ-Roll Call on Jan 6, 2025

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WASHINGTON — Speaking up about his experience defending the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has made Daniel Hodges a target.

But even as Donald Trump returns to the White House, vowing along the way to pardon many of the rioters who beat Hodges and his colleagues, the Metropolitan Police officer is not lying low. On Monday, he plans to return to the Capitol as a guest of Sen. Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif., to observe the certification of election results.

“They still make arrests. I still testify in court. It keeps getting harder and harder — I get more emotional in court, which is odd … I don’t think a day has gone by where I don’t think about it,” Hodges said ahead of the fourth anniversary of the attack. (Hodges was speaking in a personal capacity and not on behalf of the Metropolitan Police Department.)

“But the truth still matters,” he continued. “I feel an ethical obligation to make sure that people understand what actually took place.”

Hodges is part of a small group of Capitol Police and MPD officers who have publicly shared their stories in the years since the attack. He testified before the select committee to investigate the attack, which was carried out by a pro-Trump mob echoing the president’s baseless claims that the 2020 election had been stolen.

Hodges, who remains with MPD, suffered a concussion in the attack. In a video clip that has become emblematic of the violence of that day, a bloodied Hodges is seen wedged between a doorframe and a police shield that had been stolen by the mob. He screams for help as he and other outnumbered officers try to stop a swarm of rioters from entering the Capitol.

“To me, of all the horrible images of that day, his being crushed in that doorway was one of the most haunting,” Schiff, who sat on the select committee, said Friday. “I wanted to acknowledge his extraordinary service and thank him. But also to let him witness a peaceful transfer of power and what he has helped make possible.”

Hodges was flattered by the invite, but it’s by no means a happy occasion for the 10-year MPD veteran, who has been a vocal critic of Trump and joined former Capitol Police officers Harry Dunn and Aquilino Gonell in campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

“I have mixed feelings,” Hodges said. “But I like that I can make it more difficult for the GOP to ignore the police who protected them.”

To Hodges, like some others who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6, Trump’s reelection feels like a betrayal. He’s watched with frustration in the last several years as Trump and his allies have distorted the events of the attack, and as congressional Republicans have seemingly sought to shift the blame away from Trump.

Meanwhile, Congress has blown past its self-imposed deadline to put up a plaque honoring the officers who defended the Capitol that day. That plaque, according to House Democrats, is complete and waiting on sign-off from House Republican leadership. To Hodges, it’s a “slap in the face.”

“There was a brief, glorious period after the sixth where it seemed like we were all on the same page and it seemed like the GOP could take this off-ramp from Trump world and save face in the process,” Hodges said. “But that lasted all of 30 seconds before … everyone fell in line.”

More than a thousand people have been sentenced for their part in the Capitol riot, on charges ranging from disorderly conduct to assaulting police. Around 60 percent received some time behind bars, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. Trump has described the rioters as “hostages” and promised to move quickly on his first day in office to pardon them on a “case-by-case” basis. “It’s going to start in the first hour that I get into office,” Trump told Time magazine in December.

Schiff, who was a manager in Trump’s first impeachment trial and is a frequent target of the president and his allies, is also seeking to combat the whitewashing of Jan. 6 as he gets situated in the Senate after more than two decades in the House. And he faces new threats, as Trump has floated the idea of jailing Jan. 6 select committee members.

“It wasn’t something I considered when making this decision,” Schiff said. “I certainly want to vigorously push back against all the revisionist history, and maybe when people see that [Hodges] is there, they’ll be reminded what happened to him that day and that this was not some peaceful tourist visit.”