Officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6 say their struggles linger, 5 years after the riot
January 4, 2026
Five years after the Capitol riot, some of the police officers who fought off the rioters that day say they’re still struggling with what happened. And that’s especially the case since Donald Trump was elected to a second term last year and pardoned about 1,500 people who’d been convicted for their actions at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Several police officers who fought the rioters said in Associated Press interviews that the hardest thing to deal with has been that many people are playing down the violence from that day, or they’re ignoring it or claiming it didn’t happen. That’s despite a massive collection of video and photographic evidence documenting the violence.