Former DC Metropolitan police officer Michael Fanone ripped the second Trump administration on Thursday in reaction to a resurfaced video of the president condemning violence immediately following the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the Capitol.
“We have seen too many riots, too many mobs, too many acts of intimidation and destruction. It must stop, whether you are on the right or on the left, a Democrat or a Republican, there is never a justification for violence. No excuses. No exceptions,” President Donald Trump said during a Jan. 13, 2021, address following the insurrection.
“America is a nation of laws. Those who engaged in the attacks last week will be brought to justice,” the president continued.
“You sure that’s not AI?” Fanone, who was attacked during the Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill, said, laughing after former CNN host Jim Acosta showed the clip on his podcast. “Don’t think I counted 10 fingers there.”
Fanone’s quip came amid the backlash over the DOJ’s $1.7 billion so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” The retired officer rebuked the department this week in a separate interview with CNN, criticizing the fund the DOJ described as being launched to create “a systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare.”
“It’s rubbing salt in the wound to all of the officers that fought to defend the Capitol,” Fanone told Anderson Cooper.
Among those who are likely to apply for claims are those who were charged in connection to their role in the riot, but were later pardoned by Trump last year.
Acosta stated on Thursday that Trump only condemned the violence on Jan.6 because he “was in hot water and he thought he was going to be impeached and convicted and removed and blocked from the presidency ever again.”
“Well, he’s reading a script, and let’s not forget that in Trump 1.0, there were actual guardrails to the presidency,” Fanone told Acosta.
The former D.C. officer then took a jab at the members of Trump’s administration in his second term, claiming that those around him in 2021 did not want to be held “criminally culpable for anything that took place at the Capitol,” but “that doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Now we’ve got Todd Blanche and Kash Patel and, you know, Dr. Oz and this whole cast of buffoons and clowns who themselves have committed crimes on Donald Trump’s behalf,” Fanone scathed. “And so it’s like, you know, it’s that old adage of … if you commit a crime in with another person, that now you guys were kind of linked together.”