For 20 years, I patrolled the streets of DC as a Metropolitan Police officer. My beat was working as a plain-clothes narcotics officer, and I busted up countless drug gangs and criminal networks over the years. Then, on January 6, I self-deployed to face down the mob that Donald Trump sent to the Capitol to overturn the election and illegally keep himself in power.
For that, my brother officers and I were excommunicated, called traitors and liars, and ultimately forced to leave our jobs as police officers. Many of the Republican members of Congress whose lives we saved that day have spent the years since then spreading lies and conspiracy theories that get us targeted with death threats and constant harassment.
And they do it all for one reason: to please their boss, Donald Trump.
Well, I was back in DC this week, rolling around in a mobile billboard truck plastered with a picture of Donald Trump and his “best friend” Jeffrey Epstein (Epstein’s words, not mine). The message on the truck said, “Of course he knew about the girls,” referring to Epstein’s recently released emails confirming that Trump knew about his predation.
We were doing this while Congress was voting to release the Epstein files, something Trump has spent his entire first year in office trying to prevent. But that didn’t keep the bill from passing by an overwhelming margin, with even Trump’s most sycophantic enablers voting in favor. Now the truth finally has the opportunity to come out.
We’re doing all this for a simple reason: to expose Trump’s lies, corruption, and criminality.
Trump ran (and won) by promising voters low prices, full employment, and world peace. Instead he’s delivered nothing but chaos during his second term, while enriching himself and his billionaire buddies. He said he would release the Epstein files, then fought desperately to bury them, even getting Congress to leave town and having his own attorney general do a 180 on her promise of “maximum transparency.”
Donald Trump is a liar and a fraud. I learned this the hard way on January 6, when his followers tried to kill me. It’s time the rest of America wakes up to this reality. At Home of the Brave, we’ll keep bringing the fight to this administration, and we won’t stop until all of their lies and secrets are exposed. Come ride with us, because this is still just the beginning:
Michael Fanone is a former police officer who defended the Capitol on January 6. He is an Advisory Board Member and Spokesman for Home of the Brave, a new initiative highlighting the harms of Donald Trump’s second term.
