On Jan. 6, 2021, 140 police officers were injured defending the U.S. Capitol from a violent mob of President Trump's supporters. Five years later, many still live with the physical and psychological damage from that day.
NPR Investigations correspondent Tom Dreisbach sat down with two officers who defended the Capitol — Michael Fanone and Daniel Hodges — to watch their police body camera footage from Jan. 6. Both were subjected to some of the most brutal violence of the day, inside a tunnel where police were outnumbered by rioters armed with flagpoles, stun guns, crutches, stolen police shields and chemical sprays.
Fanone, Hodges and other officers say that Trump's mass pardon of Jan. 6 rioters has exacerbated the trauma of that day. Both Fanone and Hodges have received death threats and been called "crisis actors." But the footage from their body-cameras shows the reality of what they experienced.
Both videos come from NPR's Jan. 6 archive, part of a long-term effort to preserve the historical record — a public database tracking every arrest, charge, verdict and sentence related to the attack. In Dec. 2025, the archive expanded to include police body-camera and surveillance video and other courtroom evidence, making this material available for anyone to examine firsthand. For more, go to npr.org/j6archive.
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