A former Capitol police sergeant on the personal and political consequences of Jan. 6

Aquilino Gonell left the Dominican Republic when he was 12 in pursuit of the American dream.

He joined the Army, fought in Iraq and became a police officer at the U.S. Capitol. On Jan. 6, 2021, Sargeant Gonell was attacked and beaten by rioters as he and his fellow officers tried to hold the line.

"I raised my hand and swore to protect the Constitution of the United States because this country gave me an opportunity to become anything that I wanted," Gonell says.

"To be honest, I did not recognize my fellow citizens who stormed the capitol on January 6, or the United States that they claimed to represent."

Today, On Point: Aquilino Gonell’s new book American Shield – and how one immigrant’s American dream turned into a nightmare.

Sergeant Aquilino Gonell, former Capitol police officer who was attacked by rioters on Jan. 6. Co-author of “American Shield: The Immigrant Sergeant Who Defended Democracy."

Part I

ANTHONY BROOKS: When he was 12 years old, Aquilino Gonell left the Dominican Republic for the United States in pursuit of the American Dream. He moved to Brooklyn with his mom and brother. He didn't speak English well. He struggled to fit in. And to help pay for college, he joined the Army Reserves, fought in Iraq, and became a U.S. citizen.

And in 2006, he fulfilled a lifelong dream and became a police officer at the U.S. Capitol. Three years ago, on Jan. 6, 2021, Sgt. Gonell's American dream became a nightmare. Rioters spurred on by former President Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Gonell and his fellow officers were badly outnumbered. The mob beat them with pipes, sticks and rocks, sprayed them with chemicals, as they tried to hold the line and defend the Capitol and the peaceful transfer of power. Because of his injuries suffered that day, Sergeant Gonell had to retire from his career as a police officer at the age of 42.

Now, he's written a book about that day and about his life. It's called “American Shield: The Immigrant Sergeant Who Defended Democracy." It's co-written with Susan Shapiro. And Sgt. Gonell joins us now from Washington, D.C. And Sgt. Gonell, welcome back. It's great to have you On Point.

AQUILINO GONELL: Thank you for having me on your show.

BROOKS: Yeah. And I want to thank you, first of all, for the work you did. Especially on January 6th, for putting your life at risk to protect the democratic process. Sincerely, I want to thank you for that, and I'm sorry that you had to go through what you went through. And my guess is that this was a tough anniversary for you.

How did you process what you went through? How have you been processing it three years later?

GONELL: It's the third year, date of remembrance, not anniversary. Because it's not something that was pleasant for me and a lot of my fellow officers. We're still trying, I'm still trying to process a lot of the things, a lot of new information that still keep coming, be coming out into the light almost every day. So it's ongoing. The process. I had, although it has been night and day from the time, on the immediate aftermath in terms of how I deal with the ramifications of that day, in terms of mental health and how I see and view the day events.

BROOKS: Yeah.

And I want to hear more about that in terms of your mental health and how you've been recovering, but I think it would be helpful for us to go back to that day and just to set up a couple of things. I want to play a little bit of tape from January 6th. Here's former President Donald Trump. He gave a speech at The Ellipse in Washington, where he falsely claimed that he won the 2020 presidential election and urged his supporters to march to the Capitol, where Congress was preparing to certify the results of the election and Joe Biden's victory.

DONALD TRUMP: We're going to walk down, and I'll be there with you. We're going to walk down. We're going to walk down, anyone you want, but I think right here, we're going to walk down to the Capitol.

And we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. Because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. And here's a little more of what Trump told his supporters gathered at the ellipse on that day.

But I said, something's wrong here. Something's really wrong. Can't have happened. And we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

BROOKS: Sergeant Gonell, that was early in the day of January 6th. You couldn't have known what was about to happen, what was about to explode.

But how worried were you at that point? I know you were aware of the kinds of things that Trump was saying to his supporters.

GONELL: The only thing that I knew at that time was what was being reported on the news, in terms of him directing the people to gather here in D.C. on the fourth.

At that time, I was not on, I had a Twitter account, but I was not very active in social media in terms of finding out what he was saying. But it surprised me that he pointed the people to go to the Capitol in U.S. As he says, let's fight, alluding to, let's fight, if you don't fight, then you don't have a country anymore, right?

BROOKS: Fight like hell, he said. Yeah.

GONELL: Yeah. And a lot of people took that as marching orders to include breaching and dismantling some of the fences that we had around the Capitol. The Capitol was already closed due to the COVID pandemic and the restrictions that were in place around the country. Those same restrictions came from his own government.

So it bothered me that he pointed the mob or those people to the Capitol.

BROOKS: Yeah. Then you write at around 12:50 in the afternoon, the call came, your radio blared that all officers were needed at the West Front. Send all you have, is what you heard. So you suited up, preparing for the worst and you headed off toward the lower West Terrace entrance of the Capitol.

Can you describe the scene that you saw when you arrived?

GONELL: After I heard that call, I think it was two or three times that it came out on the radio. And like you said, I describe it at length in the book, American Shield. I immediately told my squad members, "Hey, let's hurry up. Let's get our gear ready and rush to the West Front."

By the time I got to the West Front, through the underground tunnels, right where the President comes out in the iconic arch of the Capitol, the minute I opened those doors, you could hear the crowd. Roaring. And some of the officers screaming in pain. Because by the time I got to the area, to the West Front, from the east where I was staged, some of the same mob that claimed to be supporting the police officers, that were beating my colleagues.

And immediately after I got to the inaugural stage, I noticed that there was a seat of people rushing, they're moving very hard. And I paused for a second and I said to myself, "This is going to be a [expletive] long day," and it was. By the time I got one flight down to the lower West Terrace, the police officers, my colleagues were getting beat up, pushed, shoved, taken to the ground.

Punched. And by the time, there was no time for me to coordinate and we just began to defend, I began to defend my colleagues and join the fight immediately.

BROOKS: Yeah. And the way you describe it is so vivid in the book. I'm just going to read one sentence here. You write, "The back of my eyes went hot as I witnessed my fellow officers brazenly beaten with pipes, sticks, and rocks by rioters who chanted, 'Fight for Trump and USA,' Trump banners outnumbered American flags."

And you write that for a second you froze in fear. "I'd seen this kind of unbridled rage in Iraq when the base had been under attack. And so I knew this was bad." So Sergeant Gonell, you literally flashed back to war in Iraq that day.

GONELL: Yeah. And that was the infuriating thing, because I never expected this type of violence happening, especially at the Capitol, our seat of democracy. Where I worked, where I spent many years defending and protecting. And these are the type of things that happen in a third world country, in countries where I come from, the Dominican Republic and others.

We seen those things happen. And I never in my life that I imagined that it will happen here in the United States, especially those acts being done by native born citizens. And here I am, an immigrant, defending the Capitol, something that they are not doing. You write in the book, and you also said this in your testimony before the January 6th committee, that on more than one occasion on that day, you felt like you were going to die.

Can you describe what actually happened that made you feel like you were going to die?

GONELL: Vice President, I'm sorry, the President Biden quoted me on his speech on January 6th, a couple of days ago. And when he says there was an officer that says ... my time in the Capitol was worse than my time in Iraq.

And it was in a sense. Because in Iraq, I knew who the enemy were or what to look for in the enemy. And I knew the danger I signed up. Isn't this war? Anything could happen in war, but here at the Capitol it was surviving. One moment after another. When we lost the police line, I was afraid for not only my safety, but everybody else, including my colleagues and those elected officials inside the Capitol.

Then, as we were retreating, we continued getting attacked, pummeled and beaten up, just for simply doing our job to trying to prevent the mob from going in. Then we go up the stage, where we lost more ground, and then we had to retreat inside the tunnel, inside the tunnel. That's where we confronted, at least in my part, the most fear, fierce, [fierce]ful fight happened in the Capitol. Where officers are getting crumpled, trampled and crushed to death and multiple things, officers are being pulled into the mob and being up.

So that's where I almost lost my life a couple of times in there.

Part II

BROOKS: Sergeant Gonell, I know that you know this, but I'd like to get your response.

Former President Trump, of course, who is running for re-election, has said that if re-elected president, he would pardon the January 6th insurrectionists. I'd like to talk to you about that. He's not the only one. Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who is chair of the Republican Conference in Congress, she's called them January 6th hostages.

And here's Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who's also running as a Republican candidate for president. He recently said that what happened on January 6th was not an insurrection. He also said that he would pardon former president Trump. Here's DeSantis on Russell Brand's podcast "Stay Free" in July 2023.

RON DeSANTIS: It was not an insurrection. These are people that were there to attend a rally and then they were there to protest. Now it devolved and it devolved into a riot. But the idea that this was a plan to somehow overthrow the government of the United States is not true and it's something that the media had spun up.

To say that they were seditionists is just wrong.

BROOKS: And Republican presidential candidate and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said she would also pardon former President Trump if he's convicted, if he's found guilty of essentially aiding and abetting an insurrection. Trump currently faces some 44 federal charges and 47 state charges across four separate criminal cases.

Here's Haley at a campaign event in New Hampshire last month.

NIKKI HALEY: I would pardon Trump, if he is found guilty. A leader needs to think about what's in the best interest of the country. What's in the best interest of the country is not to have an 80-year-old man sitting in jail, that continues to divide our country.

What's in the best interest of the country would be to pardon him so that we can move on as a country and no longer talk about him.

BROOKS: Sergeant Gonell, I'd like to get your response to that. If Trump were found guilty of any or all of these charges, should he be pardoned? What's your view?

GONELL: No, I don't think he should be pardoned. And what the reason is, because he will, he has said that he's going to try to do this again. If he doesn't win. What is there to say that he's run again for the presidency or any other type of office and lose, and then try to do the same thing.

Ron DeSantis, he gets a run. If he is so comfortable with what happened in the other Capitol on January 6th, and he should do that in Tallahassee in his governor mansion and do the same and have those Antifa people do the same thing. In terms of Nikki Haley, she knows better. She knows better than that.

Whether you are 80 years old or not if you commit a crime, you should be held accountable. If I were to do any of those things that he's accused of, I would be in jail on January 6th or the 7th. A lot of the elected officials that continue to downplay what happened.

They weren't there. And some of them, they were. Like Stefanik. Calling them hostages and first, they were saying that those were Antifa. So are you trying to pardon those Antifa rioters? Because that's what you're saying. And these are convicted criminals in court. They have been convicted and indicted by the judges.

They had gone through the process of going to the court system, a judicial system. So again, they're not in jail, in prison, because their political views. They're in jail because the criminal action and felonies that they committed. To include assaulting police officers, like myself. Speaking Mike Johnson, a couple of weeks ago, I think it was before Christmas.

He said, he held a press conference talking about --

BROOKS: You're talking about the current Speaker of the House, Republican Mike Johnson.

GONELL: Correct. Correct. So he held a press conference where he was talking about releasing the tapes, the videotapes of the Capitol during January 6th. And in the same breath, in the same sentence, he said three different things that are contradicting to each other.

He says, "We are the party of rule of law and order. We want transparency." And then immediately after saying transparency, he said, we have to blur out the faces of these quote, innocent people who were inside the Capitol. So the Department of Justice cannot identify and prosecute these individuals. As if innocent means hunting them, him and his colleagues, room by room, to kill them. All these people, they had set times, they had tactical gear, military gear, weapons.

Beating up the police officers, and that was not peaceful. So if it wasn't planned, how come they have all this gear? How come they have all this equipment? To what, to play house? Doll house?

BROOKS: Yeah, and Sergeant Gonell, it's not lost on me either that you were there. Fighting to protect the Capitol from these people. Who might well have done harm to someone like Mike Johnson and his Republican colleagues.

That seems to be an important point here.

GONELL: One thing that I want to stress is if these people that they claim are hostages, political prisoners, patriots, on January 6th, they were breaching and storming the Capitol. They went over layers after layer of security, to include assaulting the police officers, like myself.

If those people, they're considered like the Republican elected officials, including the former president. And Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, if they consider those people, those things, as they say, patriot and hostages, then who are we, the police officer, on January 6th, what is our title on January 6th?

The hostages taker, the securities, the sequesters, what is it to them? Who are we? And this is the party that claimed to have our back.

BROOKS: So I want to talk more about January 6th, but I want to come back to that later in the show. Because Sergeant Gonell, if it's okay, I want to get to the story of your life which you write about in a really powerful way in American Shield. So let me switch gears just a little bit, because it's, I think it's important that people understand where you came from and who you are. So you were a kid in the Dominican Republic. You were very close to your grandfather. He was a poor farmer with very little education.

So when you had a chance to come to America, what did America represent to you?

GONELL: An opportunity to not only do better for myself, but to help my relatives back home. It was hard for me at first to adapt and assimilate to this new culture. I struggled early on with learning the language. As I mentioned a lot of times in the book, I made reference to those things.

And yet, after each setback, after each challenge, after each adversity that I had to overcome, I tried to look for another way to do certain things after I fail, because it took me many times just to get or do something. And that's what I learned, too, when I was growing up here.

That no matter how many times I fail, I could do and try to do something, certain things, if I approach a different way, and I had the opportunity to do that. Back home, I may not have those things. Because of the system of governance that we have, or the lack of opportunities, but here was with this great opportunity, and that's what motivate me to be who I am today.

BROOKS: You're 12 years old and you come to Crown Heights in Brooklyn, and as you mentioned, and as you write, those early years weren't easy, and in fact, you describe being in America just two weeks, and your father, who was driving a cab, was stabbed. You were having a terrible time, as you said, fitting in, learning English was hard.

And after a certain point, you had a chance to go back home to the Dominican. And You were really committed to staying there at that point, right? And you went to your grandfather, and you told him you wanted to stay, that you wanted to work on the farm with him. What did he tell you when you told him that?

It was a hard conversation, but it was honest. I told him everything that was happening to me at that time. The lack of support, both from my teachers, from my own parents, because they had their own issues going on. The stabbing, the shooting of my dad. First, he was shot two weeks after I got here, and then two years after, later, and then two years later, he got stabbed.

BROOKS: That's right. So he was shot first. I misspoke there. So he was shot first and then stabbed later on. Still, it's a terrible story.

GONELL: Correct. And for me to have the honest conversation with my grandfather. Watching him struggle by himself, because when I was growing up, it was just his son and myself and my brother who were helping him out in the farm and watching him overwork, doing a lot, all these things by himself, because by then my uncle had moved out in a way from the farm, and I saw him struggle.

So I wanted to be there for him, but at the same time I was struggling. I knew that had I stayed back home, I would be more useful, but then he made me realize that I was giving up on the opportunity that I have, which is not many people get to have, especially here in the United States. So he convinced me to return and apply myself a little harder. And that's what I did.

BROOKS: Yeah. And eventually after you came back, you decided to join the army. You realized, among other things, that this was a good way to help pay for college.

It helped you become an American citizen. And what you didn't count on was the attacks of 9/11 and then being deployed to Iraq. What did you feel about the war and America's involvement in Iraq at that time?

GONELL: When I joined the military, to be honest, like I mentioned in the book, it was just merely me trying to, one, get an education, two, getting away from my dad.

Because I knew we had our differences given the fact how he was treating my mom at that time. Once I realized that I didn't have enough money to pay for college, then I had to figure out a way to continue my education. Because I saw that as a way for me to get out of poverty, to open more doors.

I joined the military. And immediately, I think the Kosovo war was happening around that time. And I volunteered for that. I wanted to do something good to help people, but they never picked me for that as well. But then 9/11 happened and immediately I was on the base doing a 17-day orders that I have, just trying to pay for my school.

And when that happened, my education and all the things that were around me happening. Took a back seat, because I knew that there was a possibility that we were going to war, and I was ready, and I wanted to go. And even I also wanted to go to ground zero and help the rescue mission, for survivors.

BROOKS: Yeah. In Iraq, you were mostly confined to an American base, but you saw some awful things, including some of your comrades being torn apart by mortar attacks. I'm just wondering what that experience in Iraq did to you and how it altered your view of America.

GONELL: It was hard time for me. Although I had mastered the language a lot better than as a kid.

I still struggle with my accent. And some time, I don't know if you could tell now, I do have a thick accent and people think that just because I have a thick accent, I don't know a lot and I don't know how to speak. But guess what? I do know how to speak, and I do know how to understand and comprehend.

I know two languages and that's hard enough to deal with, compared to one. Like some people want to make fun of my accent, but that's on them. In terms of my time in Iraq, it was hard. Because I was there in the middle of the war, one of the few Latinos in my company, you know, and we were subjected to certain things, especially moved around.

Like you said, I volunteer for a couple of times for mission to go outside the base. And that was, to me, that was eye opening, because I knew poverty. I knew coming from the Dominican Republic, I knew some of these things. A lot of the officers, soldiers, they had issue, and they were homesick a lot. Because they had never seen another country ever and grew up with a lot of amenities.

I didn't have those things. So for me, it was easier to assimilate. The only difference that I saw was the language. Instead of being in Spanish, it was in Arabic. So I adjusted fairly quick, but in terms of the struggles that we did, we had a detachment in Abu Ghraib right when the human abuse was happening, with the prisoners in there. We try to stay clear out of those things. Then we saw motor rounds, incidents, which I was responsible to tally who was injured, from my company and then reported those things. I did security guard at the hospital.

Trying to prevent the prisoner of wars that we had, or enemy combatant, injured people from injuring our own soldiers and sailors, at the hospital. The same thing with guard tower, guard duties, that we had to do. So there's a lot of things that I did, including convoys as well.

BROOKS: We're coming up on a break, so I'm going to ask you this really, and ask for a sort of brief answer, because we don't have a lot of time, but one of the things you write about in the book was the whole idea of going to war in Iraq was for a search for weapons of mass destruction that were never found.

And I'm just wondering how that made you think about the war.

GONELL: It changed my perspective. Because, although we went for those reasons, I tried to do everything in my power to do what I was right, including when I saw any misbehavior from my own force and identify those things. Unfortunately, we came back. I came back with PTSD from the war.

Part III

BROOKS: Sgt. Gonell, just before the break, I'm sorry I had to cut you off.

You were just talking about what happened to you when you came home from Iraq. You mentioned that you were suffering from PTSD because of what you went through there. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

GONELL: Thanks for having me again, Anthony. My time in Iraq was not easy. I had a supervisor that had a gung ho for me at that time, for whatever reason.

BROOKS: You mean he had it in for you? He wanted to make life difficult for you?

GONELL: Yeah. Yeah. It's clearly, in my opinion, that's what it was. But then again, there were other things that were happening around me, like things that I couldn't control, the motor attacks, the violence from the enemy.

And I was subjected to those things. For my platoon Sergeant Pendergrass, he survived and myself we survived motor rounds a couple of times. So just being exposed to those things gave us PTSD and I never thought that I would come back.

It took me years to realize that I was suffering from PTSD, because I was in denial. It's something that over time I realized through treatment and from action, that my action, that all the people noticed that I was not okay. So I took it upon myself to get myself checked out.

And it was PTSD. Unfortunately, it's a disease that I had to deal with it. It was aggravated on January 6th. And the aftermath. Because everything that happened to me, more than 40 people attacked me on that day. Sometime individually, sometime simultaneously and all at once.

BROOKS: So I want to talk to you a little bit about your decision to become a Capitol police officer. Because early in the book, it's a very nice passage, you get, as a high school student, you visit the Capitol. And you're actually treated very well by a Capitol police officer who made a bit of an impression on you because he was very friendly.

He connected, if I'm recalling correctly, he connected with you as a fellow Latino and made an impression on you. And you held, kept that dream with you for years to come, right?

GONELL: Yeah. And the backstory of that trip is that was well my attempt to skip school. Because I was struggling with the language and my guiding counselor told me, "Hey, your girlfriend is going on a trip." And I said, "Oh, really?

She never, she didn't mention to me to that." But nevertheless, I registered myself to, I volunteered to go on the trip, and I was happy that they picked me as well. And had a nice day, learned a lot more about this country who opened its arm for me in terms of the historical things and events here in the Capitol.

And then when I got to the Capitol, I like you said, I met this spoken, professional police officer who was nothing like the police officers that I had met, come in contact within the Dominican Republic. Sometimes we joke around in the Dominican Republic.

Sometimes you don't know who the bad guy is, whether the police officer or the person mugging, which one is better. At the Capitol in D.C., this person was very nice to me and gave me a good impression of how the profession was, and that kind of planted a seed for me in the future.

BROOKS: I want to go back to January 6th and get a little more specific about what happened to you, because during the attack on the Capitol, you sustained some pretty serious injuries. If I'm recalling correctly, to your foot. Your shoulder, your biceps ... you required multiple surgeries, and the injuries eventually required you to retire from the Capitol Police at just 42 years old.

Can I ask you how you're doing now physically? How are you doing?

GONELL: Physically I had recovered from most of my injuries. I still have a little bit motion, range of motion restriction on my left arm, but overall, most of my physical injury have healed. I'm able to do a lot of things that I used to do prior January 6th. Although I now had to do it with a little more conscious about my restriction and ... my limits. In terms of the other injuries, which is the most severe one for me, and that's one of the reasons why I had to medically retire, because it was my PTSD.

That's what was triggered. Most triggering for me. Because I had risked my life for elected officials. And then again, those same individuals turn around and side with the mob, the people who were assaulting me and my colleagues, the same people who were hunting them down, room by room, inside the Capitol on January 6th.

And for me, that was triggering. There were times that I had to sit down and sit in my car after arriving early in the morning and decide whether I wanted to muster the courage to go back inside the Capitol to the crime scene. And then listen to people like those elected officials who side with the insurrectionists.

And not only was that triggering for my PTSD, but then it created a moral injury. Because I knew that I did, I know that I did my job. I know it was my duty to do those things that I did. And now they're telling me that they'll rather side with the rioters, calling them hostages and patriots and political prisoners.

Who are we then to them? The police officer. You know what I mean? So that's the moral. And one thing on that is I kept thinking because of the action that I did on January 6th. And if there was another instance where I had to do something similar to those things, I kept thinking, would I not only had to worry about the threat in front of me, but now I had to worry about the elected official from the Republican side who had downplayed what happened behind me.

So I had two different things where I didn't feel comfortable being around. And that's one of the reasons why I left the Capitol. Because I don't trust the political Republican official inside the Capitol to have my back. Would they be assisting me in securing the capitol or would they try to hold me down and restrain me, so I don't do my job. And that's hard for me to, or anybody to swallow.

BROOKS: Yeah, I understand. Speaking of Republican officials who might not have your back, here's some tape. I want to play a cut from Republican Congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana from November 2023, who falsely suggested that January 6th was orchestrated by the FBI, who he claimed sent buses of agents disguised as Trump supporters. So here's an exchange between FBI Director Christopher Wray and Congressman Higgins. You're going to hear FBI Director Wray speaking first.

CHRISTOPHER WRAY: You are asking whether the violence at the Capitol on January 6th was part of some operation orchestrated by FBI sources and/or agents, the answer is emphatically not.

CLAY HIGGINS: You’re saying no?

WRAY: No!

HIGGINS: You’re saying no? Okay.

WRAY: No. Not violence orchestrated by FBI sources or agents.

HIGGINS: You know what a ghost vehicle is, director? You’re director of the FBI, you certainly should. You know what a ghost bus is?

WRAY: A ghost bus?

HIGGINS: Ghost bus.

WRAY: I'm not sure I've used that term before.

HIGGINS: Okay. These buses are nefarious in nature and were filled with FBI informants dressed as Trump supporters.

BROOKS: Okay, that was Republican Congressman Clay Higgins making a claim for which there is no evidence or proof, speaking with FBI Director Christopher Wray. Sergeant Gonell, when you hear things like that, what does it make you think?

GONELL: Disappointing. Very gullible on their part, because on January 6th, they knew who the threat was. They knew who was responsible for it. I knew, and that's what I risked my life for it, trying to protect them. And now that they are away, three years away from that horrible day, they forgot, or they had chosen to lie to themselves and pretend that they were not fearful for their lives.

While they were running for their lives, I was surviving and trying, risking it all to protect them, so they could get to safety. And unfortunately, they had shown me that they disregard any sacrifices, and they disagree any sacrifices that myself and my colleague did on that day. It's easy for them to say, make all these accusations.

All they had to do is go to the prisons in D.C. And talk to the January 6th rioters themselves and ask them how many of them were driven on those ghost bus that he's talking about? How many of them are Antifa or part of the FBI? These are criminal people that were found liable for their actions on January 6th because they attacked police officers.

They breached the Capitol, and they were the target themselves of the mob, so they are willfully choosing to be in Iraq, and for political purpose.

BROOKS: Toward the very end of the book, you write this. You write, "Despite the January 6th committee's recommendation that Trump be criminally prosecuted for inciting the insurrection, conspiracy to defraud America, making false statements and obstructing Congress.

Nobody seemed able to stop him from running for our highest office. At age 76, he is allowed to go after his old job while my career was destroyed at 42 because of him." And this is the part of the story that is really hard to read, because it feels so unjust. As an immigrant, you did everything right.

You worked hard. You go to college. You serve the country in Iraq. You became a police officer. But you end up losing your career because of those injuries you sustained on January 6th. And this is leading to a question, and I'm not even sure what the question is. But have you made peace of some sort with that, Sergeant Gonell?

GONELL: I could tell you that. Do I miss my job? Yes, absolutely. Of course, I miss being there, providing for my family and also doing ... what I wanted, my profession. I had seven years left before my mandatory retirement, if I chose to. So I had many years left in my service to this country. These, this person took a lot, not only from me, but for a lot of those people, including those who are in jail, because the lies that he continue to propagate. And it's unfair, it's not fair that he continued to be running for presidency where he's clearly shown that he's orchestrated, he's now saying things outright.

That, if I lose again, then we might do the same thing again, another insurrection. Because he plants and telegraph all these things that he's willing to do. And here are the elected officials like Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell and the other ones, continue to placate in support and downplay everything that he says he's going to do and continue to do or what he wants to do.

Now he's saying that he wants to be a dictator. And these people, the people of the rule of law. Law and order, conservatives, they continue to follow along, like insane, like we had gone to war to fight these depots, to fight these authoritarian regimes overseas. And here you have somebody who's telling them, Hey, I want to be like those people.

I want to be like Putin. Put me back in charge and I'll be your first king or authoritarian president.

BROOKS: Before we run out of time, I want to ask you about your future. Your fellow officer, former fellow officer, Harry Dunn. He served 15 years on the force and was one of four officers along with you who testified before the house committee investigating the attack on the Capitol.

He's running for Congress. He's running for the Democratic nomination to replace Representative John Sarbanes in Maryland. I'm wondering if you're thinking about that.

GONELL: At this moment, I'm not, but I do support him. I think he'll be, he'll do a great job as a congressperson. Before I even contained that thing, making that move.

I think the first person I had to convince is my wife and she's not ready for that. So if I cannot convince her for those things, then --

BROOKS: It sounds like you, it sounds like you might want to try to convince your wife.

GONELL: No, not yet. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. It's something that is very personal.

It's a lot, implicates a lot of things. And this time I'm more focused on my healing, continue to serve this country in a different way in my community as well. Whatever that encompass in the future. I had not given a lot of those thoughts. I enjoyed my family time with my son and my wife.

And for right now, I'm good and continue to heal.