Aquilino Gonell, former Capitol sergeant: ‘If it hadn’t been for the police, the US would be a dictatorship’

There are unsung heroes who put their lives at risk for others, heroes like 46-year-old former police sergeant Aquilino Gonell on January 6, 2021. On that day, a mob of fanatical followers of Donald Trump attempted to attack the U.S. Capitol, the symbol of the people’s sovereignty. Gonell, who was born in the Dominican Republic, put himself into God’s hands to defend the Democratic and Republican lawmakers in the building. On that day, legislators were preparing to certify the results of the election, confirming Joe Biden’s victory over the controversial New York real estate mogul two months prior. The police sergeant, who emigrated to the New York suburbs when he was 12 years old and could not yet speak English, left behind the life he had been fighting to achieve. In one of the darkest episodes of U.S. history, Gonell was beaten with flag poles and crutches, kicked and thrown around, resulting in injuries from which he has yet to recover, years later.

“That the nation’s president denies what happened and tries to rewrite history is something that torments me, and aggravates my moral wound,” says Gonell during a long telephone conversation with EL PAÍS. “If it hadn’t been for the actions taken by officers like me and my colleagues, the United States would now be a dictatorship instead of a democracy, which I hope it will continue to be after this black cloud who is currently running the country.”

Five years after the attack on the Capitol, former sergeant Gonell opted to leave the country to get away from the memories that still trouble him. He traveled to Colombia to spend a few days with his wife. He lives in Virginia, a half-hour drive from Washington, where the Capitol still stands, a supposed symbol of freedom. Gonell wrote an emotive and shocking book, American Shield, in which he shares his experience.

“I was assaulted by more than 40 people, my face was covered in blood,” he says. The attack on the building lasted for five hours. During that time, Gonell thought he was going to die, that he would never see his family again. The aggressions left him with serious injuries to his foot, shoulder and hand — but the worst part was the psychological trauma that still resurfaces when he recalls that day’s events.

Question. Would you do it all over again? Would you put your life at risk?

Answer. Yes, I have no doubt that if I was in the same situation, I would do it all over again. I would do my duty. There are some things that a person can’t control. According to my conscience and the eyes of God, I did what was right. It’s them who will have to settle accounts later on, because of their cowardice, their lack of loyalty to the country, and the damage they caused by not doing what was right.

Gonell says that he was the first person in his family to finish high school. His father was a taxi driver in Brooklyn and didn’t have the money to send him to college. So, he enlisted with the military to pay for his own education. “What I experienced defending the Capitol against rioters was worse than the combat I saw in Iraq,” he said in an article published by The New York Times on the fourth anniversary of the attack. He has had to retire due to his injuries. He survives on a pension that constitutes 40% of his salary as a police sergeant at the Capitol. “I have also lost a lot financially,” he says. Some of the people who died while attempting to attack legislators have been awarded millions in compensation by authorities. Gonell has had to launch a crowdfunding campaign to make ends meet.

Q. What happened that day?

A. It’s hard to remember it. I have trauma. Now they say nothing happened, nothing happened. I have a couple of questions. When they say nothing happened, what do they mean — that nothing happened to them? Nothing happened to the government’s elected officials. It happened to us, the police.

Q. Do you still get threats and insults?

A. Yes, every time I post something online. I did my duty. I did what I had to do on my own authority. I defended, protected, and saved lives that day. The lives of government officials, those of the people who nowadays, instead of praising the police, attack us.

During the course of that fateful day, nine people died as a consequence of the onslaught of hundreds of extremists and conspiracy theorists who believed Trump’s version of the election results. To this day, the Republican magnate says the 2020 election was stolen from him, despite the fact that there is a complete lack of proof to back up the statement — and indeed, there is much that points to the contrary. One of the officers who was with Gonell, Brian Sicknick, died after suffering two strokes caused by pepper spray. Another officer experienced burns from electric shocks that caused brain damage. Four who were wounded that day committed suicide in the months that followed.

Q. Is there space for forgiveness or reconciliation after what happened?

A. No, I don’t think so. One of my reasons for saying no is because those people, who were pardoned, the first reaction they had was to try to seek retaliation against me, against my colleagues. Those people don’t want the country to reconcile. They’ve gotten more defiant. They have tried to intimidate and assault us. They intimidate other politicians and elected officials, they make you doubt that a national reconciliation will ever be possible while this president is in office.

Gonell doesn’t want to remember. He suffers severe post-traumatic stress to this day. The trauma worsened when Trump won the election to return to the White House.

Q. How did that make you feel?

A. I had a lot of different emotions that day. I thought, “Why did I risk my life, if at the end of the day the person responsible for it, who lied, who planned it all, they believed him?” They believed the liars more than us, the people who defended the Capitol. I can’t believe that person deserved to be elected. He should never have been president again. I tried to warn people. I talked to people who didn’t understand what happened. I spoke in English and in Spanish. Even with all the things I did, because I felt that it was my duty, an extension of my service, telling the truth to people, even with all that, here we are again. I told them, “Be careful, a second chaotic period of Hurricane Trump would not be good for us, it wouldn’t be good for the country, it wouldn’t be good for democracy.” And look what happened.

Q. They voted for him again.

A. The founding fathers of this nation never predicted a situation like this: that the president of the United States would one day take revenge against his own government when he didn’t manage to win re-election, nor did they imagine that the population would support him despite it. The worst part is that the elected officials, who know how things are, who lived through it, who have seen the evidence, and out of political convenience, out of fear of retaliation, out of fear that they will back a challenger in their election, haven’t opposed him.

The damage that Trump is causing is irreparable. It’s going to take a lot of time to fix this crack he has created in terms of trust in the federal government, in institutions, laws, politics, and for rules to be respected

During the four years of the Biden administration, a congressional committee was created to investigate January 6. A criminal case was opened, and a judicial process was initiated. That House of Representatives committee published its findings in a meticulous report that documented Trump’s “multi-part plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election.” It also supplied evidence that uproots the conspiracy theory of the supposed Democratic theft at the ballot box.

Q. Did members of Congress support you?

A. Many Republican legislators like to say they support the police, that they are defenders of the law and of the rules. But they turn their backs on us, even when we were the ones who did everything necessary to save their lives, everything that was required of us. Now, they criticize us for it, but on January 6, when the mob was coming after them, chasing them, looking to hunt them down, attacking the Capitol room by room, that day they panicked and were dying from fear. They tried to save their skins. That is what they have forgotten.

After the frenzied attack by hundreds of protestors, a vote was held to disqualify Trump from running for president again, but it failed by a handful of votes. And when the special counsel of the case, Jack Smith, was about to file his indictment, Republicans nominated Trump as their presidential candidate, and the Justice Department shut down the trial because the law grants presidents certain immunity from criminal proceedings. Smith later said that there was more than enough evidence to convict Trump for trying to undermine the 2020 election results. But his report was useless. As soon as the Republican came to power for a second term, Trump pardoned 1,561 people who had been charged with federal crimes for their involvement in the assault on the Capitol.

Q. What was your reaction to the Trump pardons?

A. Just minutes after he was sworn in as president, minutes, and under the protection of some of the very police officers who on January 6 protected the Capitol and were attacked by Trump supporters, he pardoned more than 1,500 people who attacked the police. The Republicans now call them heroes, they say they were the victims and that they are the patriots.

Q. Not to mention, they have no regrets.

A. No, they have no regrets. When they were in the court in front of the judge, many of them said they’d do it again. For him to pardon all of them, without reviewing them case by case… If they had done their research, they would see that many of them were not peaceful people, that before this they had committed crimes. Many of them should be in prison.

Q. Do you think that there is a solution for the country, after two Trump terms, polarization, internal division, the persecution of political adversaries? Do you think that wounds this deep can heal?

A. The damage that Trump is causing is irreparable. It’s going to take a lot of time to fix this crack he has created in terms of trust in the federal government, in institutions, laws, politics, and for rules to be respected. Now, if something bad happens, even if it’s his fault, he blames someone else. That creates mistrust in the system of checks and balances. He only wants the information he provides to be taken into account. Anyone who proposes or says anything contrary to his views is attacked, dismissed as irrelevant, or accused of inconsistency.

Q. He’s leaving several political victims in his wake, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who always questioned the attack on the Capitol.

A. He left her in front of an oncoming bus because of political differences. For me, it’s not a question of good or bad, I think that there are things to be said against the Republicans and the Democrats. At the end of the day, I did the right thing. I equally defended Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy. I didn’t ask them who they voted for, I just knew I had to defend the Capitol, defend my colleagues, defend the lawmakers, and defend the nation. Sometimes they call me a traitor, sometimes they throw things at me, but these are the same people who claim to support the police. Except for the Capitol police, that is.

Q. You’ve talked about betrayal.

A. I’ve felt betrayed by the Republicans who lived through the experience of January 6, 2021, because they forgot about the fear they felt for a couple hours that day. They lost that fear and went back to supporting him. I feel betrayed by the Republican Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, who refused to disqualify him because he said the civil court would take care of it. I feel betrayed by the Republicans who have stood idly by, waiting for God to save them while they do nothing. I also feel betrayed by the congressional commission, which did not provide much of the information it gathered to the Department of Justice in time, and the trial could not be held. The role of the attorney general was also a betrayal, as he did not do what he had to do because he wanted to project neutrality. And finally, I felt betrayed by thousands of people who forgot about January 6 in the last election, as if nothing ever happened.

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