Capitol Police Officer Danny Hodges on January 6th
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Before today's interview with Danny Hodges, I need to make clear that any opinions he expresses do not imply endorsement by the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C. They all had a singular objective.

They all moved as a single unit to achieve that objective. And there are defensive tactics were not effective. There are CS gas, OC spray. They fought through it to attack a singular objective and achieve that objective. So that's that's not really that's why I don't really call it a riot. That was that was a mobile force that was preplanned that they wanted to achieve their objective, which was stopping the transfer of power. Your task will not be an easy one.

Your enemy is well-trained, well-equipped, and battle-hardened. There is not a liberal America, any conservative America, at its state of America. Good night, and good luck.

Hey, folks, and welcome back to the Lincoln Project Podcast. I'm your host, as always, Rick Wilson. We have a very special guest today. It's Danny Hodges. Danny Hodges is a name you probably haven't heard, but you should know. Danny is a Washington, D.C. police officer, and you've seen him a thousand times. He is the police officer that day defending the Capitol who was caught in the doors when the mob was charging the buildings.

I want to welcome Danny to the show today. Danny, thank you so much for being with us. And I want to lead out by asking a little bit about you. Where'd you come from? How'd you become a DC cop? What's your, what's your backstory a little bit. So folks understand your, your, your, your background. Hey Rick, thanks for having me on. Um, I was born and raised in North Carolina. Um,

Had an idyllic childhood down there until about the age of 16. Moved up to Northern Virginia with my folks then. And went to college for a little while at George Mason University. And then just gradually drifted eastward until I landed in D.C. because I was applying to police and fire jobs. And eventually NPD took me in D.C. So here I am. Okay. Okay. Well, so...

On that moment on January 6th, I'm going to jump right to the story now. When did you get deployed to the Capitol that day? When did you mobilize to go to the Capitol? Was it before the attack started or was it as the attack was happening? So my CD or civil disturbance unit was assigned to work the rally that day. And we started, I want to say around seven in the morning.

We were initially assigned to Constitution Avenue, which is the road that leads to the Ellipse just outside it. So I was there all day. We were there when the speech ended, when the rally ended, and people started flowing from the Ellipse to the Capitol. And then I heard on the radio as things were just getting more and more out of control at the Capitol until eventually –

Eventually, the commander we had in the field there at the Capitol just started requesting more and more units until they requested my unit to go down to the Capitol. So we left, excuse me, from Constitution Avenue to the Capitol once things start really getting out of control. So on the radio traffic, were you here? Did it seem like the minute they left the Ellipse, when did it transition from, oh, they're leaving the Ellipse to, oh, shit? Yeah.

Yeah, I don't have the timestamps memorized. Sure, sure. It was pretty –

It was pretty soon after. It was obvious that it was the same group. As they were leaving the Ellipse, they were going to the Capitol and it just made things worse and worse. Right. So you have a couple thousand folks suddenly walking down the mall. And folks, it's about a 10, 15 minute walk maybe to the Capitol. It's not a long walk. So you've got this understanding suddenly a couple thousand of these people are coming down the

Coming down, some are walking down Constitution, some are, you know, coming right up the mall itself. And so as you're doing this, they're getting closer. And so Metro and the Capitol Police have to coordinate these sort of things.

But as soon as the first parts of the mob got there, they started heading up to the bicycle stand barriers and pushing those over. Were you hearing from the Capitol Police when the violence started to hit? What was the radio traffic like? What were you guys hearing? Did you anticipate you'd be going in basically into combat?

Well, the context for us was basically the whole year of 2020 with the Black Lives Matter protests and riots. So we had been working riot control for a very long time. You know, there's something that we were used to in that day. We were just there for another event that could potentially turn into

into criminal activity, but obviously we didn't anticipate what happened. So that was our background going into that. And what we heard on the radio, we don't have shared panels with U.S. Capitol Police, so we just had MPD traffic on our air. And we heard our commander over the air, and we had heard him before getting obviously agitated with 2020, but this, it became...

you know, something new. You could tell from his voice that the threat was greater than anything that we had anticipated before. So that's

Just listening to his voice, we could tell that it was getting real. And so by the time we got to the Capitol, we pulled up on the west side, sort of the northwest portion of the Capitol grounds. And then we – that was as close as we could get. Senate side, right? Yeah, that's as close as we could get in a vehicle. So we got out on foot.

and mobilized into two columns and had to march our way in there from there. And the Capitol was already largely surrounded by people. So we had to march through them until eventually we were attacked and had to fight our way up to the line.

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- I mean, pretty close. It was when we first started making our way through the crowd, they were content to yell at us, calling us traitors, calling us oath breakers.

telling us to remember our owes, telling us to be on the right side of history. But as we got closer, the more aggressive and violent the crowd became until eventually they attacked us. They cut off our formation. So we were separated from our leadership and we were

attacked on all sides. Wow. I mean, they're still arresting these sumbitches. They're still there. So they're still arresting them. Not only are they, they're still not just trying, they're still arresting them as they slowly become, become known. So you guys make it into the building.

Well, we first make it to the line outside the West Terrace and we hold back for as long as we can. At that point, I'm hopeful that they're just going to be content with that. But eventually they're able to break through and the West Front just devolves into a series of pitched battles, individual battles. Yeah, look!

I was pushed up against a wall by like four guys, four or five guys, while one of them grabs me by my neck and holds me down and tries to gouge out my eye. You can actually hear it in my body or on camera as I'm screaming and trying to get him off me. Thankfully, I was able to do so before any permanent damage was done. We've lost the line. All MPDs, get back.

We couldn't restore the lines, so we just retreated into the building itself. Now, is that, and that's the famous shot of you, is you're caught in that door, that mob is uncaring, they're crushing you in that door. Come on!

I mean, that was a moment where you clearly had, I mean, you had to be thinking at that moment, this may not work out. Yeah, definitely. It's weird to be surrounded by backup, by your allies, but also completely helpless and understand that they are not in a position to help you either. It's weird to be, you know, not facing an explicit, like,

A gun threat, like a gun isn't being pointed at my head, but there is absolutely a danger of being severely injured or killed because I was struck in the head with my own baton after someone stole it from me when I was trapped. And that's something that is considered lethal force when we do it. So if I was struck in a different way or struck again in the same spot, the odds are very real that I could have been killed. Yeah.

You know, and so you've got these people and they, you know, from what we've all seen on the video, they had the fanaticism that mobs have, that intensity, that power, that anger that mobs get when they're activated. Right.

You had seen other civil disturbances, Black Lives Matter protests and things like that, and the May 25th protest. You had seen those, but this struck me as having a different flavor, a different feel to it. This was directed more than random. This was an assault, not just a disturbance. Right. So something a lot of people...

try and bring up to equivocate is the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020. And I do not defend those whatsoever. I worked those and they were violent. When they were violent, they were bad. And I do not approve of that. However, they were not the same thing as January 6th. When there were riots in 2020, in my experience, they were very... Violence was the goal in and of itself.

The mob, when they attacked us, that was their victory condition. And our defensive tactics were effective. When we used gas, OC spray, our batons, they dispersed and fell back and they were mobile. Whereas this group, they all had a singular objective.

They all moved as a single unit to achieve that objective. And there are defensive tactics were not effective. There are CS gas, OC spray. They fought through it to attack a singular objective and achieve that objective. So that's, that's not really, that's why I don't really call it a riot. That was, that's,

That was a mobile force that was pre-planned that they wanted to achieve their objective, which was stopping the transfer of power. And that really is something that everybody in service in this country swears an oath to the Constitution. And they're yelling at you that you're breaking your oath. All these people, many of them former military, many of them former law enforcement or some even current law enforcement that were involved in January 6th.

They were fundamentally breaking an oath. They were breaking an oath that would break the country. And so, you know, you guys at that moment, did you have a sense during the entire day that you guys were standing not just to protect the Capitol, but to protect the country? Did that enter your mind that this was a bigger fight?

Definitely. I mean, obviously, I can only speak for myself, but I knew what was at stake. I knew what they wanted. It was very obvious that they wanted to do harm to our elected officials at a minimum, if not capture or kill them.

And I also I'm also keenly aware of the razor thin margins in Congress. If they had gotten one or two of them, then that could have changed the balance of power. If, you know, looking to the future, if they managed to capture or kill someone with a bright future, that would have changed the future of the country. So, yeah, it was absolutely on my mind. What was at stake? And that's interesting.

Something I'm proud of is something someone brought up many years later that I didn't even think of. They mentioned that I didn't even run away. And it never even entered my mind to retreat. So when they said that, I was like, oh, I guess I could have. But no, it's fight as long as you can, hold out as long as you can. That was it. So the story I don't know, and I think people would love to know.

How did you get out of the door and what happened after that? Yeah. So I was obviously, as everyone's seen, I was being crushed between this metal door frame on one side of me.

On my right, yeah, sort of back right side and then on my left was the mob that was pushing forward. And I was completely helpless. I was, you know, my arms were pinned to my side. I couldn't get to any of my equipment. So all I did was I cried for help because that's all I could do at that point. And thankfully, some of the officers behind me heard me and were able to back up enough to create enough room for me to get out of there.

And so once I did that, I fell back to the rear, put some water on my face, took a few minutes to rest. And then I got up and got back out there because the fight wasn't over and they needed every body they had. So until backup got there in force, I had to do my part.

What was the turning point of the day for you guys? When did you realize you were going to triumph in holding the Capitol and starting to push these folks out? I was also – I should have mentioned in my brief bio. I also did six years in the Virginia National Guard. So when I was on the U.S. front, I was – in my mind, I was doing the calculus as to how long it might take the Guard to respond. Right. So I was waiting for reinforcements for a long time. Right.

Then after the tunnel and I rested a bit and got back out on the West Terrace, I held the line out there for a little while. That's when I believe the first reinforcements I saw, I believe were from Montgomery County, Maryland. When I saw them, I thought, okay, thank God, we're finally getting some backup. We might be able to outlast them here. Right.

Thankfully, we did. Backup kept coming from as far away as New Jersey. We were able to take a break ourselves. We stayed in the Capitol until, I want to say, midnight or 1:00 or something, until they finally let us go. When they let us go, those of us in my unit who needed immediate medical attention went to the hospital. Those who didn't were still on the clock because even though we were pushing these people out of the Capitol grounds, they were now in DC, which is MPD's problem.

So we had to remain in the city just waiting to see what would happen now. And we stood by until like 1 or 2 in the morning, and that's when I was able to finally go home. Wow.

So were there any, I mean, we know that there were groups there that day, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, some of whom were much more, their backgrounds are much more likely to be military or law enforcement. Did you encounter any of those folks during the course of this day? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, we saw all sorts of branding and regalia and stuff.

Yeah, just tons of obviously Trump gear, Trump flags. They were chanting, "Fight for Trump." So it was not very ambiguous to me as to why they were there. And I had run an Oath Keepers before in December, I want to say, or November of the previous year. They had been in town and causing disturbances at rallies and stuff. So yeah, they were all over the place.

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So, Danny, obviously you face this on the front lines, but you also seem to have you clearly have a perspective on the importance of this. Do you feel like MPD and the Capitol Police are ready if this happens again?

Well, I have no intel as to what goes on in capital. I can't really speak for them. I'm not authorized to speak for MPD. I know you're not official. Yeah, of course. Speaking as in my personal opinion, I think MPD obviously takes it seriously, takes what happens seriously. They look to the future with...

with an eye to what happened previously. So, yeah, I mean, we're going to do everything we can. And unfortunately, our numbers are at historic lows. Like so many police departments across the country, we're having a huge manpower shortage. And that's really exhausting. A lot of people working mandatory overtime, forced devils all the time. But regardless, we're going to be out in force and we're going to do everything we can to secure jobs.

every aspect of our election. Well, I'm very hopeful that we're going to have a more peaceful resolution this time. Knock on wood, but it is to the credit of guys like you who stood on the line that day. Because if the mob had found Nancy Pelosi, or if the mob had found Mitt Romney, I don't think they would have survived.

If the bomb had found Mike Pence, I don't think he would have survived this. Yeah. A lot of people don't realize how close they got. Like they were, they saw Mitt Romney. I think it was. And they just, just a few 30 seconds earlier or later, the things could have been very different that day. Right. Right. And, and, you know, for, for, for all the, for all the, the, the, the,

that day, all the damage that day, you know, we had, watching it on television, we all had a sense of, dear God, how is this, how are we going to survive this? How's the country going to survive this? But, you know, again, I want to, I just want to praise the work that you guys did that day and the Capitol Police did that day and everybody who came in to back it up that day.

that day because it really, it will go down in history, I think, as one of the most perilous days of our country's history. And Danny, I just, I want to tell you how much I appreciate you and how much we at the Lincoln Project appreciate you. And to tell you, if you haven't heard it lately, America appreciates the kind of work you did that day and the courage you showed that day because it really made a fundamental difference in how that terrible day turned out. Well, thank you so much, Rick.

Well, I want to thank you so much for coming on the Lincoln Project podcast today. I really appreciate it. You know, again, I hope we're going to have a peaceful transition. I hope you are. I hope you I hope your next January 6 is boring and cold weather. And that's about it.

I have a feeling it's going to be a lot better than the last one. Honestly, when people ask me if I'm worried about something like January 6th happening again, I say not terribly, not in D.C. I think the consistent arrests that our federal partners have made have been a big help. And I'm more worried about what's going to happen in the states and at polling places across the country. I think people need to be more concerned about security there. I think that's right. I think that's right. I think it's very much –

I think it's very much a state. If they scattered into the states, they could cause disruptions even before the counting, even before the certification day in January. They could cause it much more toward the front end of the election process than at the last minute. So, well, Danny Hodges, I want to thank you so much for coming on the Lincoln Project podcast, my friend. All the best to you. And once again, thank you so much for everything you've done. All right, Rick. Thank you.