'I've been through hell' says Jan. 6 Capitol Police officer slated to keynote Council Bluffs, Iowa political event
Harry Dunn says prospect of full-scale slaughter of elected officials, some of nation's top leaders, was within feet, an instant here or there, in run of events, from happening during insurrection
A Capitol Police officer who stood the ground between hundreds of members of Congress and insurrectionists during the Jan. 6 attack is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at a Council Bluffs, Iowa political event Sunday, July 27.
Harry Dunn, a now-departed United States Capitol Police officer who testified before Congress on the Jan. 6, 2021 siege at the capitol, became a high-profile representative of the experience for other peace officers — many who were injured, some who died.
Dunn said the prospect of a full-scale slaughter of elected officials Jan. 6, some of the nation's top leaders in both parties, was within literal feet, an instant here or there, in the run of events, from happening.
"Members of Congress were being told to take their pins off because they didn't know if people would recognize that," Dunn said in a phone interview with The Iowa Mercury. "We were a couple of right turns, and wrong turns by the insurrectionists, away from it being a bloodbath."
Dunn will speak at an event hosted by the Pottawattamie County Democratic Party from 1 to 3:30 p.m. Sunday, July 27 at The Grass Wagon, 110 S. 29th St., Council Bluffs. Tickets can be purchased in advance here. Or at the door. The event is a fundraiser for the Pottawattamie County Democratic Party.
"There's so much to do and it's not one person or two people that's going to save the country," Dunn said. "We need everybody. The message that I give is more a message of resilience. And I end it usually when I talk to people with 'I haven't quit yet. And I've been though hell.' I get death threats weekly. It used to be daily, but it's kind of gone down a little bit."
For his part, Dunn is the author of the book "Standing My Ground: A Capitol Police Officer's Fight for Accountability and Good Trouble After January 6th."
Dunn ran for Congress as a Democrat in Maryland in 2024, but fell short in a primary before starting a political action committee, Democracy Defenders, which supports candidates who take on what the PAC calls "MAGA extremists and the massive Super PACs that undermine our democracy."
"After Jan. 6 my whole life changed, everything changed, as everybody saw on TV," Dunn said in the interview.
Dunn lays the uprising at the Capitol squarely at the feet of President Donald Trump whom he sees as a threat to democracy. On the the first day of his second term in the Oval Office Trump granted clemency to those involved in the Jan. 6 siege of the capitol.
"The reason why I continue to speak out is to seek accountability, to make sure that something like that never happens, that it didn't get whitewashed," Dunn said.
Dunn, a James Madison University graduate who played briefly in the Canadian Football League with the Montreal Alouettes, had nearly two decades on the Capitol Police force. He left that organization four years short of being able to collect a full pension so he could pursue advocacy for democracy.
"I did everything I could to make sure we could get Donald Trump held accountable and we could stop him since the courts didn't do it," Dunn said.
Like others who have worked at the U.S. Capitol, Dunn, said the grounds and history-around-every-corner atmosphere never grew old, such is the reverence he holds for the center of American democracy.
"To have it desecrated in the way that it was it just took so much of the love and the passion away from me and I turned it into what I'm going now, just a continuing fight,” Dunn said. "I realized that I did all I could do as a police officer."
Before he left office, President Biden provided a preemptive pardon to Dunn to protect him from potential MAGA retaliation for his actions on Jan. 6, testimony before Congress and continued advocacy.
Dunn knows threats to his vey life lurk to this day. It's a burden, but one he will carry, Dunn said.
There is a racial dimension to the Jan. 6 story, Dunn, who is Black, said in the interview. He recounts the torrent of slurs being hurled in his direction at the insurrection, words he never heard while wearing the police uniform until that day. He deeply details this in his book.
Big Picture, Dunn said he has a rare insight into how conspiracy theories, even the wildest ones, work their way from computer and smart-phone screens and screeds into real life, how people are captured in cult-like fashion online, and radicalized. He literally fought the flesh-and-blood results of conspiracy theories in the U.S. Capitol.
"Now it is everything is conspiracy theories," Dunn said. "It is making individuals paranoid. Paranoid individuals do what they did on January 6."
He added, "Before January 6 you had people who thought satellites were following them or this and that. But Donald Trump has honed in on it and created a whole new population of people who — and I don't mean this literally, but maybe — have found a hill to die on on conspiracy theories. Ashli Babbitt would still be alive if she did not come to the capitol on January 6. If Donald Trump did not lie about the election being stolen January 6 would not have happened."
About The Iowa Mercury
(Douglas Burns, founder of The Iowa Mercury and a fourth-generation Iowa journalist from Carroll, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Read dozens of the most talented writers in Iowa in just one place. The Iowa Writers' Collaborative spans the full state. It’s one of the biggest things going in Iowa journalism and writing now — and you don’t want to miss. This collaborative is — as the outstanding Quad Cities journalist Ed Tibbetts says — YOUR SUNDAY IOWA newspaper. )
This is a great article !
It’s critical we all hear this man. His first hand experience should motivate people to work hard everyday to retain our democracy.