Rioters tried to kill me on January 6. Trump pardoned them.

What it’s like to defend democracy, only to be called an un-American traitor.

Photo Credit: Hannah Yoest / The Author

As I defended the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, one memory stands out clearly in my mind: rioters calling me un-American, a traitor, an immigrant. Only one of those things is true. I was born in the Dominican Republic and came to this country when I was 12, in search of a better life. I chose to be an American. And I stood my ground on that day as wave after wave of rioters attempted to breach the Capitol building because it was my duty to uphold my oath—the same oath I’ve taken multiple times, when I became a US citizen, a soldier, and a police officer—to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States of America.

I was born in Guayubin, Dominican Republic, settling with my family in New York City in 1992. I enlisted in the US Army in 1999 and deployed to Iraq in 2004, ready to do my duty for the land of opportunity that I was proud to call my own. Nothing I saw there compares to the sheer medieval violence on display on January 6, with hours of exhausting hand-to-hand combat. After returning from the war, I joined the US Capitol Police in 2006, ultimately serving proudly for nearly 17 years. It had always been my plan to serve for many more, if it wasn’t for injuries sustained that day at the hands of Trump’s supporters, who have ended my career and forced me to retire.

On the morning of the attack, I was a member of the Capitol Civil Disturbance Unit (CDU), which mobilizes in the event of emergencies. I responded to the West Front of the building when I got the call: “We need backup! We have a breach on the West Front! Send all you have!” The rioters descended on us as one angry mass, trying to bypass us and layer after layer of security fencing. Eventually they breached the building while assaulting me and my colleagues. We knew this was the worst case scenario. Inside, Congress was in full session—hundreds of Democratic and Republican members, and their staff—formalizing the peaceful transfer of power. We were the only thing standing between them and the violent mob before us.

LISTEN: The call for backup that Sgt. Gonell responded to at the West Front.

I fought against more than 40 rioters for six hours. They beat me with stolen police equipment, construction tools, broken furniture, my own baton, and, at one point, a flagpole with the American flag still attached. Even amid the frenzied fighting, the irony wasn’t lost on me that I—an American by choice, a foreigner who supposedly doesn’t belong in our country, who defended this country in two uniforms—was being assaulted with the very symbol that I had spent my life revering, by a crowd that was engaging in the most un-American activity conceivable.

Eventually, I ended up in the tunnel, where the president comes out to take his oath of office to faithfully execute his duties. Alongside roughly 30 to 40 officers with no reinforcements, we prepared to make our last stand. “We are not losing the fucking Capitol today!” yelled a Metropolitan Police CDU Commander. Exhausted, injured, and trampled from both sides, I started to feel myself losing oxygen. I reconciled myself to the terrifying thought that this was it—I was going to die defending this place. I was going to lose my life not on some distant shores, but right here, in the nation’s Capitol, at the seat of American power.

All because a raging mob had been whipped into a frenzy by a liar and a charlatan who couldn’t just admit that he lost an election.

Sgt. Gonell and his fellow officers battling rioters outside the Capitol / Photo Credit: The Author

About an hour earlier, my friend Danny Hodges and I were being crushed bodily inside a door as we battled rioters in a tunnel. Danny was bleeding from his face and I was bleeding from my hands. At times, I was able to get away from the mob, repelling their attempts to drag me into the crowd. My friend Michael Fanone came to relieve me and was dragged into the crowd, where a man shouted, “Kill him with his own gun!” My friend Harry Dunn guarded the Speaker’s office, fighting until his fists were bloody and enduring racial slurs from Confederate flag-wielding rioters. That’s the reality of what we went through that day.

Through all of this, we were on our own; despite being just blocks from the White House, the president chose to watch the attack unfold in broad daylight, without lifting a finger to help. As I attempted to help one of my fellow officers who had fallen to the floor, a rioter named Kyle Fitzsimons tried to pull me into the mob, causing me to fall and injure my left shoulder while other rioters beat me. Somehow I found a way to stand up. All around me, my fellow officers—people who today I consider closer than brothers—were going through the same kind of hell.

Harry Dunn, Michael Fanone, Aquilino Gonell, and Danny Hodges speak at the Principles First Summit / Photo Credit: Hannah Yoest

Ultimately, five heroes lost their lives in the attack. But those of us who made it though will carry scars with us—visible and invisible—for the rest of our lives. In the aftermath of January 6, I moved through my days at work in a shell-shocked daze. I remember parking my car outside the Capitol, wondering whether I should go in or not. It felt surreal—unreal—to return day after day to this battle scene where so much blood had been shed. When I went in, I avoided the entrance where I had almost been killed. I took the long way around instead.

After doctors insisted I get x-rays and MRIs, I learned that I had to undergo two major surgeries to address my injuries sustained in the attack. This included having a metal plate and eight screws put into my foot, which I still have in my body. Years of physical therapy followed, plus counseling to work though the PTSD the attack left me with. Today, I still can’t rotate my shoulder properly or hold things up for a long time. As I healed, I went through the promotion process for lieutenant, but as a result of my injuries—which left me unable to discharge the job’s physical duties—I had to forgo it. Instead I retired from the force after 16 loyal years of service.

Donald Trump’s lies had brought us to this point, and they continued to shape people’s responses as I went public with my story. Almost all Republicans in Congress were too cowardly to participate in the Select Committee created to investigate the attack, aside from Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger—brave, lonely voices who have since been driven from their party and from public office. I testified before that committee, along with Hodges, Fanone, and Dunn.

President Biden greeted us as heroes, and I was honored to receive the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Citizens Medal, becoming the only Latino/Dominican to ever receive such honors. I wrote a book—“American Shield: The Immigrant Sergeant Who Defended Democracy,” or “Escudo Americano: El Sargento Inmigrante Que Defendió la Democracia”—to tell my story in my own words, rather than let Trump’s sycophants assassinate my character through coordinated hit jobs.

Sgt. Gonell is awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal / Photo Credit: Adam Schultz

I told the world what had happened that day, in hopes that an honest accounting of the facts could help ensure something like this never happens again. That didn’t happen. Instead, Republicans treated me like something less than human. They refused to shake my hand or even look me in the eye in the halls of Congress. These were people I had interacted with every day for a decade and a half; people who I had nearly lost my life to protect. While they were running scared to safety, I was getting trampled underfoot by the mob. They even refused to put up a Congressionally mandated memorial to the January 6 officers inside the Capitol, in clear violation of federal law. A lawsuit to force its installation has been filed.

It got worse. In 2023, House Republicans released a deceptively edited video with the intention of showing the world that January 6 was mostly peaceful, pretending the violence I faced in the tunnel never happened. I was horrified to find myself in the video, with a selectively edited cut showing me standing upright. This was apparently meant to wave away my injuries, my PTSD, my surgeries, my job loss, the years of recovery. It was the greatest insult I’ve ever received from people who call themselves leaders, but who are in fact cowards. And it was, obviously, an utter lie. Republicans in Congress know this because, on January 6, they were scurrying to safety while we were outside fighting.

More insults followed. When Dunn and I visited the Pennsylvania State Capitol in 2024, we were booed by Republican lawmakers, many of whom walked out in protest of our presence there. I’m sure if there was an attack, and they were trapped inside, they’d have been glad to have us. But here, with no threats to their physical security and a prime opportunity for political strutting on a national stage, they were happy to throw us cops under the bus. All of this from the party that purports to “back the blue.”

The final and ultimate desecration of our service and sacrifice came on January 20, 2025, four years after the attack derailed my life and my career. After being guarded and protected by many of my former colleagues who defended the Capitol against his sympathizers, Trump betrayed us once more. After explicitly promising to pardon all of the January 6 rioters on day one if reelected, Trump followed through. All 1,600 people convicted or awaiting trial in connection with the attack were granted clemency, and those who were locked up were allowed to go free.

My phone blew up with messages, texts, calls, and emails from the Bureau of Prisons, federal prosecutors, and FBI agents to warn me about the impending danger of such a reckless move. Reporters called me asking for my reaction to the breaking news. And family and friends checked in on my mental health. What could I tell them? Trump told us over and over again that he would do this, and then he did it. Everything was out there in plain sight for the nation to see, and it saw fit to return him to the White House anyway. Our repeated warnings went unheeded.

The pardoned rioters included Fitzsimons, the man who did more than anyone to try and kill me on the day of the attack, and who was subsequently convicted on 11 counts and sentenced to 87 months in prison. Within weeks, many of these people were back committing new felonies, and some have been sent back to prison (where they should have been all along) on other charges not connected to the insurrection. This includes a man who was among the first to breach the Capitol on January 6, and who was recently re-arrested for making terroristic threats against Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, including saying that he wanted to “eliminate” Jeffries because “I cannot allow this terrorist to live.”

All these things have changed me. The physical injuries have healed the best they could. My recurring PTSD continues to be triggered by the actions of the so-called “law and order” party, whose leader is a felon who pardons other felons. All these nice slogans—“law and order,” “back the blue”—and yet so little to show when it comes to actual actions. If Republicans did believe those things, they would not have nominated someone who put his own vice president’s life at risk, our elected officials at risk, our front-line officers at risk, and our democracy at risk.

Moreover, they have created a moral injury where those who attacked our democracy, battered the police, and hunted elected officials—literally, room by room—are applauded and praised as if they achieved greatness. Today the GOP calls these people heroes, patriots, and warriors. Or, when they want to paint them as victims, they call them political prisoners or hostages. This is pathetic. Either narrative paints the police as the bad guys, and the criminals as heroes. Yet we, the officers, protected each and every elected official the same, regardless of party affiliations. We protected Republican officials just as much as we protected Democrats.

Trump and his administration have commissioned military burial honors for a marauder who should have known better. They also are giving her family $5 million in taxpayer dollars for getting herself killed while breaching the Capitol and targeting evacuating lawmakers. Trump has replaced or fired FBI agents and federal prosecutors who sought justice. He has hired members of the mob and appointed them to positions of immense power inside the Department of Justice. He is also allowing rioters to file claims against the US government for restitution, paving the way for them to be reimbursed for money they paid for the damage and injuries they caused in the attack. And he is denying officers who faced the mob recognition for doing their duty on that day; in response, many of us have had to create GoFundMe accounts because we were denied benefits for injuries sustained on January 6.

Now that they’re back in power, Trump, his attorney general, and his FBI director talk tough about cracking down on violent crime. If that were really the case, you would think they would want those who committed one of the most spectacular acts of public violence in living memory held accountable. Officer Hodges, who I held the line with inside the tunnel, testified recently before Congress in a hearing to address political violence. There a senator asked the gathered witnesses whether the pardons for January 6 rioters were appropriate; all but two raised their hands. Ironically, those who raised their hands also claimed they are against political violence. This is a national disgrace.

In the last days of the Biden administration, I myself received something I never expected or thought would be necessary: a preemptive pardon. Recognizing the danger in Trump’s campaign promises to exact retribution against anyone who had wronged him, Biden extended these reprieves to those who ran the highest risk of being targeted. For my testimony before the House Select Committee, the president apparently decided I was one of those people, and extended me a pardon. I never asked for this, but I thanked him for it. It was one more surreal chapter in this whole strange, sad experience: Needing a pardon to shield me from political retribution for the crime of having defended American democracy. Today, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are claiming that pardons issued by President Biden are null and void.

On the three-year anniversary of January 6, during the heat of the 2024 campaign, I wrote the following: “The only moral coda for January 6 is to demand accountability ... Trump should be prosecuted to the full extent of the laws that he desecrated. Otherwise, he’ll do it again.” He wasn’t held accountable, and now we’re all left to suffer the consequences.

Only this time, he’s not only desecrating our laws, he’s unmaking our entire constitutional order, with willing support from the other branches. The Supreme Court has expanded his presidential powers and created a mechanism for him to escape accountability for his constitutional violations. And a spineless Congress has abdicated its duty to act as a check on the executive. As a result, Trump is recasting the whole federal government in his authoritarian image, and barreling through any remaining guardrails that stand in his way. He doesn’t need to send a mob to storm the Capitol now, because he is hollowing out the government from within, and twisting it into becoming a tool for his own personal power projection.

In the end, I did my job. I did what it was required of me, and then some. I kept my oath and continue to do so. Despite Trump’s and the GOP’s betrayals, I chose and continue to choose this country, just as I did when I arrived in America as a child believing in the promise of this place. I put on two uniforms—first as a soldier, then as a police officer—because I believed America was special, and worth fighting for. I fought, bled, and almost died (at home and abroad, against foreign and domestic threats) for the ideals that our flag has long stood for. And for all of that, I was called a traitor by people committing actual treason.

I never asked for any of this, but if we had to, I know my brother officers and I would do it all again. Because America is bigger than Trump and his enablers.

Sgt. Aquilino Gonell is a former police officer who defended the Capitol on January 6. He is a participant in Home of the Brave, a new initiative highlighting the harms of Donald Trump’s second term. You can support him through his Substack and GoFundMe.