In the early-morning hours of January 5, 2021, Thomas Webster, a former U.S. Marine and retired police officer, drove south on Interstate 95 toward Washington, D.C. Webster, who was then 54, had been conflicted about whether to attend the \u201cSave America\u201d rally, but Donald Trump had used the word patriot. Webster had joined the military at 19, taken his first plane ride to boot camp in South Carolina, gotten his first taste of lobster tail on a ship in the Mediterranean. He loved the sense of purpose he\u2019d drawn from the oath he\u2019d sworn when he joined the Marines: I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.Webster, who\u2019d retired from the New York City Police Department, where he\u2019d been a street cop, a firearms instructor, and part of the Gracie Mansion security detail, lived in Goshen, New York, with his wife, Michelle, an Ivy League graduate who worked in biotech sales, and their three teenagers, one of whom had recently joined the Marines. He ran a small business, Semper Fi Landscaping, cutting grass and clearing snow during winter.In the early days of the pandemic, Webster had masked in public, disinfected his groceries, and slept in the basement if he had the slightest sniffle. At first he thought keeping his kids home from school made sense. But as the months stretched on, he worried about his two younger teenagers, who didn\u2019t seem to be socializing or learning much over Zoom. One morning that spring, when Webster went outside to mow a neighbor\u2019s lawn, he found himself troubled by the surreal silence on his block, like he was standing on a vacant movie set.When Webster turned on the news, the world seemed upside down. He saw millions of people flouting COVID restrictions to protest the killing of George Floyd. He became suspicious about what the government and the mainstream media were telling him. In the summer of 2020, he puzzled over how CNN and other news outlets could describe the Black Lives Matter protests as \u201cmostly peaceful\u201d while broadcasting discordant images\u2014for instance, the flames from buildings burning orange against the night sky.During that first year of COVID isolation, Webster consumed more news than he ever had and grew irritated by what he viewed as proliferating government intrusions into people\u2019s lives. New York\u2019s Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, issued early stay-at-home orders, imposed one of the first statewide mask mandates, and discouraged in-person church services. As time passed, Webster found his views diverging from some of his neighbors\u2019 in the Hudson Valley. When students were eventually allowed to return to school, his children were among the few who climbed back onto the school bus. This was when he thought he noticed neighbors looking at him differently, as though they disapproved. Back in 2015, when Trump had begun his presidential campaign, Webster hadn\u2019t taken him seriously, because he \u201csaid some crazy-ass stuff.\u201d Webster thought of himself as a traditional, small-government, libertarian-leaning Reagan Republican; he\u2019d supported Ted Cruz in the 2016 Republican primary. Now, though, he began to find Trump\u2019s bombast refreshing. In the president\u2019s words, Webster heard echoes of his own thoughts about the strangulating overreach of an authoritarian government. Some of what Trump said about foreign policy also began to resonate with Webster, particularly his statements about wanting America to quit its \u201cforever wars,\u201d because he worried about his daughter in the Marines.Over the course of 2020, Webster found himself pulled more and more deeply into the MAGA camp. The concept of \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d seemed pretty brilliant to him. Who could argue with it? Webster had been disappointed to see the Obama administration go on what he thought was an endless apology tour around the world. Trump, in contrast, embraced the country and was unabashed in putting America first. \u201cI really appreciated that,\u201d Webster told me recently. \u201cI didn\u2019t view MAGA as \u2018extremism.\u2019 I viewed it as a sense of patriotism, a love of God and family and country.\u201dAs the pandemic and the 2020 election campaign wore on, Webster drifted further and further to the right. When he became disenchanted with even Fox News for being too moderate, and especially for its decision to call Arizona for Joe Biden so early on Election Night, he began turning instead to Newsmax and One America News Network. He migrated from far-right sites such as Breitbart News, The Federalist, and Gateway Pundit to smaller, even-further-right forums that pulsed with conspiratorial outrage.When Trump claimed that the election had been stolen, Webster was inclined to believe him. He read about a Postal Service subcontractor who said that he\u2019d driven 24 boxes of completed mail-in ballots from New York to Pennsylvania in a tractor trailer early one morning about two weeks before Election Day, suggesting that they\u2019d been improperly moved across state lines. He saw images of poll workers in Detroit covering windows, which implied to him that they were concealing electoral skulduggery. He watched a video of poll workers in Georgia pulling what Trump called \u201csuitcases\u201d of ballots from beneath a table after election observers had gone home. Based on everything he was seeing, Webster didn\u2019t find it so far-fetched that a cornerstone of democracy\u2014a free and fair election\u2014had been compromised. He believed Trump when he said that Democrats were using the pandemic to push the use of mail-in ballots in order to perpetrate widespread voter fraud. After the election results were in, when Trump asked how Biden\u2014who, according to the president, had been \u201chiding\u201d in his basement and couldn\u2019t put two sentences together\u2014had somehow won 81 million votes, Webster had to agree that was awfully suspicious.Trump had been sowing doubts about the integrity of the election since before the voting even started. \u201cThe only way they\u201d\u2014the Democrats\u2014\u201care going to win is by a rigged election,\u201d he said at a rally in August, and he repeated this sentiment over and over in the weeks leading up to November 3. After midnight on Election Night, while the votes were still being counted, Trump said, \u201cFrankly, we did win this election.\u201d As soon as the votes were finally all tabulated and the race was declared for Biden, Trump began casting doubt and scheming to overturn the result.On December 14, the leader of the Oath Keepers, the right-wing paramilitary group, published an open letter on their website urging Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act in order to block the transfer of power to Biden using military force. \u201cIf you fail to act,\u201d the letter said, \u201cwe the people will have to fight a bloody civil war and revolution.\u201d Five days later, Trump urged his supporters to attend a rally in Washington on January 6, the day the Electoral College vote was to be certified. \u201cWill be wild!\u201d he tweeted. MAGA supporters embraced the invitation. Social media and pro-Trump discussion forums teemed with people saying they were planning to \u201cstorm the Capitol\u201d on January 6. Many of them declared that they would be armed.Before 2021, the January 6 electoral certification had generally been a pro forma affair. By the time certification happens, the popular vote has long been counted, the Electoral College totals officially called. But Trump and some of his aides were plotting with a few far-right Republicans in the House of Representatives to stymie the proceedings. During the certification process, members of Congress have the opportunity to object to a state\u2019s results, which triggers debate and then a vote about whether the objection is to be upheld. But in the 133 years that this certification process had been the law, no objection had ever been sustained. Trump and his coterie intended to change that by pressuring legislators, and Vice President Mike Pence, to uphold objections to certain states\u2019 votes. \u201cThe Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors,\u201d the president tweeted on January 5. Trump supporters got the message: Outside pressure would help. If \u201ca million patriots\u201d show up \u201cbristling with AR\u2019s\u201d\u2014assault rifles\u2014\u201cjust how brave do you think\u201d legislators will be \u201cwhen it comes to enforcing their unconstitutional laws?\u201d someone posted on thedonald.win, a popular pro-Trump website. \u201cDon\u2019t cuck out. This is do or die. Bring your guns.\u201d Other posts echoed this.As Trump amplified calls for his supporters to assemble in Washington to \u201cstop the steal,\u201d Webster told his wife that he needed to go. Worried about antifa counterprotesters, he packed his NYPD-issued bulletproof vest, with his blood type, A+, written on the inside; he filled his military-issued rucksack with water, Gatorade, and Meals Ready-to-Eat (MREs). He took a Smith & Wesson revolver, small enough to fit in his pocket, and warm clothes, including a snow jacket with distinctive red, black, and white stripes. As he traveled south in his Honda CR-V, he was a man infused with purpose, a patriot answering a president\u2019s plea for help.The next afternoon, January 6, Noah Rathbun, an officer with the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C., stood behind a bike-rack barricade on the west side of the U.S. Capitol as a hostile and growing crowd closed in.Though Rathbun, a U.S. Navy veteran, had been with MPD for five years, he\u2019d never been to the Capitol. After joining the department, he\u2019d been assigned to the Seventh District, which includes high-crime neighborhoods in Southeast D.C. But he was also a member of one of the department\u2019s civil-disturbance units, and that morning his unit had been deployed near the White House. Around 1 p.m., when officers at the Capitol began radioing for help, his unit drove patrol cars toward the complex\u2019s western end. Surveying the scene that confronted him there, Rathbun had never faced so many angry people, a mass of humanity that rippled out as far as he could see. He wore a helmet, a gas mask, a fluorescent-yellow jacket, and a body camera that recorded the crowd.Earlier that day, Trump had begun his morning by once again exhorting Pence, who would oversee the election-certification process, to overturn Biden\u2019s victory. \u201cDo it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!\u201d he tweeted. Just before noon, the president began speaking to the thousands of supporters he had summoned to the Ellipse. \u201cWe won this election, and we won it by a landslide,\u201d he said. After telling them to \u201cpeacefully and patriotically\u201d make their voices heard, in order to give Republicans the courage to reject the certification, he shifted to inflaming them: \u201cWe fight. We fight like hell. And if you don\u2019t fight like hell, you\u2019re not going to have a country anymore.\u201d He told them to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, where Congress was beginning the certification proceedings, and said that he would go with them. (He did not go with them.) At 2:11, the rioters breached the Capitol building. Two minutes later, the Secret Service whisked Pence off the Senate floor.
\nMandel Ngan \/ AFP \/ Getty
\nPresident Donald Trump speaks to thousands of supporters on January 6, 2021,
\nrepeating his spurious claims of election fraud and encouraging a march on the Capitol.
\nAt 2:18, a woman wearing a Trump face mask and holding a Trump flag on a pole tried to push through the barricade that Rathbun was manning. He put his hand on the woman\u2019s shoulder and shoved her back as they tussled over the flagpole. The woman fell to the ground, upsetting the crowd. On body-cam footage, you can see one protester square his shoulders in a confrontational posture, and another raise what looks like a cane into the air as a police officer tries to douse them with chemical spray.Someone lobbed what looked like a cylindrical Bluetooth speaker into the air. It hit Rathbun in the chest. As he tried to reattach the barricade, which the crowd had dislodged, the woman reappeared. Rathbun put both hands on her chest and pushed her back, and she again fell down. Shortly after that, a bearded man, reading the officer\u2019s name on his uniform, raised his hands in the air and said, \u201cRathbun, calm down. Nobody\u2019s going to hurt you.\u201dAnother man, wearing what looked to be tactical goggles, pointed his finger at Rathbun and said to the bearded man: \u201cHe hit the woman.\u201dBearded man: \u201cI know.\u201d\u201cHe\u2019s ready to punch a woman in the face,\u201d the man with goggles said, making an uppercut motion. \u201cI treated Afghan women with way more respect than that.\u201dRathbun responded by opening and closing his fingers and thumb like Pac-Man\u2019s mouth, appearing to convey the universal symbol for blah blah blah.As the crowd blew air horns and chanted \u201cU.S.A.!,\u201d the bearded man asked Rathbun, \u201cDo you love America, Rathbun? Do you love your country, son?\u201dRathbun stared forward, his hand resting on the barricade, the final barrier between the crowd and the Capitol\u2019s western entrance. The nation\u2019s legislators were gathered inside, certifying Biden\u2019s election. Rathbun understood that his job was to protect those legislators. The barricades were flimsy and unanchored. He put his foot on the bottom of one, trying to stabilize it. Before long, another man appeared before Rathbun. \u201cY\u2019all know what\u2019s right and what\u2019s wrong. I know you\u2019re just doing what\u2019s right, doing your job, and we hope that Pence does his job,\u201d the man said. \u201cMy vote got disenfranchised by thousands of votes. Thousands of dead people voted. Those dead people are not here. I\u2019m here.\u201dIt was around this moment that Trump tweeted that Pence\u2014then being evacuated to a secure location as some people in the mob chanted \u201cHang Mike Pence!\u201d\u2014lacked the \u201ccourage\u201d to reject Biden\u2019s certification.At 2:28, a man in a red, black, and white snow jacket\u2014Tom Webster\u2014pushed his way to the front of the crowd. He carried a large metal pole with a red Marine Corps flag on it. He pointed his index finger at Rathbun and yelled: \u201cYou fucking piece of shit! You fucking commie motherfuckers, man. You\u2019re gonna attack Americans? No, fuck that!\u201d As Webster repeatedly jabbed his finger, Rathbun met it with his left hand, as if trying to swat him away. As Webster continued aggressively yelling, Rathbun reached over the barricade and shoved him back. Webster said, \u201cYou fucking commie fuck. Come on, take your shit off\u201d\u2014something people say to a cop when they want to fight.Webster reached down and shoved the barricade toward Rathbun. It slid easily across the concrete, creating a gap between it and the next barricade. Rathbun reached out to shove Webster back and struck him in the head with an open palm. The blow further inflamed Webster, who raised his flagpole into the air and swung it down repeatedly in a chopping motion, hitting the barricade with a loud clang.Rathbun and the other officers tried to reconnect the barricades but couldn\u2019t, and the crowd surged forward. As Rathbun and other officers retreated, Webster clenched both fists, crouched into a linebacker\u2019s stance, and charged into Rathbun, knocking him to the ground. As the two men wrestled, Webster tugged on Rathbun\u2019s helmet, pulling the chin strap tighter around his neck, to the point where, Rathbun later testified, he struggled to breathe. Webster pulled the officer\u2019s gas mask partway off and pressed his fingers close to his eyes. Rathbun tried to get up but couldn\u2019t, feeling as if someone in the crowd was kicking him. After about 10 seconds, Webster stood and disappeared into the crowd flooding through the breach he\u2019d helped create.Shortly afterward, someone filmed Webster standing against a wall at the Capitol, his eyes red from tear gas. Stepping away from the wall and looking into the camera, he said: \u201cSend more patriots. We need some help.\u201dAs Webster drove home to New York that night, he wasn\u2019t exactly pumping his fist over what had happened, but he wasn\u2019t full of regret, either. He felt justified in what he\u2019d done. He believed that Officer Rathbun had provoked him, gesturing him to come closer and fight. (Rathbun denied this in court testimony, saying he had \u201cabsolutely not\u201d made such a gesture. He did not respond to requests for comment.) Webster thought back to how when he\u2019d arrived on the Capitol grounds, he\u2019d seen an elderly couple leaving, the woman\u2019s face covered in blood. The image had troubled him. American citizens had gone to the Capitol to express their First Amendment rights, only to find themselves assaulted by the police? Webster says he thinks of himself as a \u201cprotector,\u201d so seeing that woman put him into a rage, which was the state he was in when he approached Rathbun at the police barrier.As he absorbed news coverage over the rest of that week, however, he was surprised by its tenor. He\u2019d thought the January 6 crowd would be viewed the way the Black Lives Matter protesters had been\u2014as a mostly peaceful group with a righteous cause. A few bad actors, to be sure, but he wasn\u2019t among them.But he quickly realized that many Americans viewed January 6 protesters like him not as patriots but as domestic terrorists. Much of the commentary Webster now saw online focused on white supremacy and featured images of protesters holding Confederate flags. Even Trump seemed to briefly forsake them, calling their intrusion on the Capitol a \u201cheinous attack\u201d that had \u201cdefiled the seat of American democracy.\u201d As politicians in both parties warned that lawbreakers in the crowd would pay, Webster suppressed a pang of fear.He seesawed back and forth as he surveyed the evidence. He watched footage of a man hurling a fire extinguisher at a group of police officers. Okay, that clearly crossed the line, Webster thought. Then he watched clips of the Air Force veteran and MAGA devotee Ashli Babbitt getting shot as she climbed through a window into the Speaker\u2019s Lobby leading to the House Chamber, and he felt outraged by what he viewed as her murder.[From the October 2024 issue: Hanna Rosin on the insurrectionists next door]Webster learned that the FBI, media organizations, and amateur internet sleuths were using facial-recognition software to identify those who\u2019d stormed the Capitol. His anxiety increased when he heard that federal agents had begun kicking down the doors of identified January 6 protesters. A friend told Webster that his picture was circulating online. One evening as he lay in bed, his wife\u2019s phone rang. His brother-in-law spoke so loudly that Webster could hear what he said: \u201cTom is going viral on Twitter.\u201d His wife looked at Webster, concerned. \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
United States District Court for the District of Columbia
\nRetired NYPD Officer Tom Webster on January 6, 2021, wielding the flagpole he used to assault MPD Officer Noah Rathbun.<\/p>\n
Annie Flanagan for The Atlantic
\nWebster today, at home in Mississippi. He served two years in prison in Texas before Trump\u2019s blanket pardon led to his release.<\/p>\n
Her brother texted a photograph that he\u2019d found trending online under the hashtag #eyegouger, showing Webster appearing to thrust his fingers in a police officer\u2019s face. Webster had already told his wife about his fight, explaining that the cop had struck him first. Now he again insisted that he\u2019d been provoked, but his brother-in-law sounded doubtful. Whatever you say, dude.Panicked, Webster went to see the priest at his Catholic church. The clergyman connected Webster with another church member who was a criminal-defense lawyer. He and Webster arranged to meet with the FBI.In the spring of 2022, Webster sat at the defense table in a federal courtroom in Washington, D.C. Legal wrangling ahead of the trial had stretched out over 14 months, while lawyers and law-enforcement agents pored over hundreds of pages of filings, reports, and statements, and watched scores of video clips. Five attorneys argued the case\u2014three for the government, two for Webster. Jurors heard from 12 witnesses: three U.S. Capitol Police officers, one MPD officer, one Secret Service agent, three FBI agents, a Safeway grocery-store district manager (who testified about how much the violence on January 6 had suppressed business), two longtime friends of Webster\u2019s, and a former NYPD officer with whom he\u2019d attended the police academy. Jurors also heard directly from Webster and Rathbun, both of whom testified for several hours, and repeatedly watched footage of their altercation from multiple angles. The court reporters\u2019 transcription of the proceedings consumed more than 1,000 typed pages.During closing arguments, a prosecutor urged the jurors to rely on what they\u2019d seen with their own eyes. He repeated this six times, the last time as a question: \u201cWhat did your eyes tell you?\u201dAfter a trial lasting five days, jurors deliberated for less than three hours before finding Webster guilty on all six counts he\u2019d been charged with, including the most serious felony: assaulting a police officer with a dangerous weapon, for violently swinging his flagpole multiple times at Rathbun. At the sentencing, in September, a prosecutor acknowledged that people like Webster might have been pawns in a political game, but added: \u201cEven if he didn\u2019t know better than to believe Trump\u2019s lies, he knew better than to assault a fellow cop, no matter the circumstances.\u201dWebster\u2019s defense attorney had argued in a presentencing filing that judging his client\u2019s character based solely on January 6 was like \u201cjudging the sea by a jugful of its water.\u201d\u201cThe court doesn\u2019t see a lot of Tom Websters,\u201d the attorney, James E. Monroe, told the judge. \u201cIn my career, I don\u2019t get a chance to represent many Tom Websters, someone who\u2019s had such a sparkling career and makes such a perfect disaster of his personal and professional life by seconds of stupidity.\u201d He said that Webster came to D.C. at the invitation \u201cof a president that was desperate to retain power. And like many other Americans, he accepted that invitation. And as we\u2019ve laid out in our own papers, the lies and disinformation were sufficient to fool many Americans, especially those who showed up here at the Capitol on January 6.\u201d He also scolded the government for seeking a long prison term for Webster, who\u2019d never before had any legal trouble and who had served his country and New York honorably as a Marine and a police officer; he called the proposed sentence \u201can act of vengeance as opposed to a prayer for justice.\u201dWebster rose to speak. He told the judge that he\u2019d become swept up in politics and Trump\u2019s rhetoric. He said he wished he\u2019d never gone to D.C. that day. He turned and addressed the police officer he\u2019d assaulted, who was sitting in the courtroom gallery: \u201cOfficer Rathbun, I\u2019m sorry.\u201dU.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta, an Obama appointee, agreed that for 25 years, Webster had been \u201ca public servant in the truest sense of the word,\u201d an everyday American who now found himself looking at substantial jail time. But although he\u2019d watched the video of Webster attacking the cop many times, Mehta said, \u201cI still remain shocked every single time I see it.\u201d Webster, he said, had contributed to one of America\u2019s darkest days: \u201cWe cannot function as a country if people think they can behave violently when they lose an election.\u201d Mehta believed that Webster had constructed an alternative truth about what happened that day, one that was \u201cutterly fanciful and incredible.\u201dBefore sentencing Webster to 10 years in prison, Mehta suggested that understanding his actions on January 6 required a wider lens. The judge posited that a man like Webster doesn\u2019t do what he did unless he is \u201cbrought to a place where his mind and his otherwise sense of equilibrium, his patriotism, his sense of self are lost.\u201d\u201cPeople need to ask themselves what conditions could have created that to happen,\u201d Mehta said, \u201cand be honest with yourself when you\u2019re asking the question and answering it.\u201dAfter Webster turned himself in at a low-security prison in Texas on October 13, 2022, inmates quickly discovered that he was a former cop. When he sat down for his first meal in the chow hall, another inmate ordered him to go and sit with the \u201cSOs\u201d\u2014the sex offenders.But what was even harder for Webster to deal with was the knowledge that people didn\u2019t see him the way he\u2019d seen himself on January 6\u2014as a patriot. Even his kids, who\u2019d always looked up to him as the father who fixed their bikes and planned family camping trips, seemed sad and puzzled, as if no longer certain about who he was.In the days immediately following the insurrection, the country seemed almost unified in agreement that what had happened at the Capitol was violent and dark. \u201cThe violence, destruction, and chaos we saw earlier was unacceptable, undemocratic, and un-American,\u201d Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said from the House floor just hours after the attack had subsided, adding that January 6 was \u201cthe saddest day I\u2019ve ever had serving as a member of this institution.\u201d The next week, the House voted to impeach Trump, and in February the Senate voted 57\u201343 to convict him, with seven Republicans joining all 50 Democrats in finding him guilty of \u201cincitement of insurrection.\u201d Although this fell 10 votes short of the two-thirds majority necessary for conviction, polls showed that a clear majority of Americans believed Trump bore responsibility for the insurrection. He was effectively banned from all the major social-media platforms, and large corporations declared that they would no longer make financial contributions to politicians who had supported Trump\u2019s election lies. Even the longtime Republican kingmaker Rupert Murdoch, who was then the chair of Fox Corporation, declared, in an email to one of his former executives, \u201cWe want to make Trump a non person.\u201d The president seemed to be heading toward political exile, his election claims destined to be inscribed in history as treasonous lies.But within hours of the attack on the Capitol, an alternative narrative was already forming. On her show the evening of January 6, the Fox News host Laura Ingraham wondered aloud whether antifa sympathizers had infiltrated the crowd. Before long, a chorus of conservative-media personalities, far-right lawmakers, and family members of rioters was suggesting that the reports of savagery had been overblown; that the events of that day had been more peaceful protest than violent insurrection; that the real insurrection had been on November 3, when the election was stolen.By March, Trump was telling Ingraham live on Fox News that the crowd had posed \u201czero threat right from the start\u201d and that protesters had been \u201chugging and kissing\u201d the police. By the fall, Trump and other prominent MAGA figures were regularly referring to the rioters turned defendants as \u201cpatriots\u201d and \u201cpolitical hostages.\u201d January 6, Trump would later say, was \u201ca day of love.\u201d News clips featured residents of the \u201cPatriot Pod,\u201d a unit at the D.C. jail that housed January 6 defendants, singing \u201cThe Star-Spangled Banner\u201d every night\u2014and before long, Trump was playing a recording of their rendition at the start of his political rallies. On his Fox News show a year after the insurrection, Tucker Carlson said, \u201cJanuary 6 barely rates as a footnote. Really not a lot happened that day, if you think about it.\u201d Representative Clay Higgins, a Republican from Louisiana, has said, \u201cThe whole thing was a nefarious agenda to entrap MAGA Americans.\u201d Shortly after the first anniversary of January 6, Trump mentioned the possibility of pardoning the defendants if he were reelected. By March 2024, during the presidential campaign, he was saying that one of his first acts in office would be to \u201cfree the January 6 Hostages\u201d; in December of that year, after he won the election, he said he would issue the pardons on his \u201cfirst day.\u201dFrom his cell in Texas, Webster tried to tune out news about the election, the potential pardons, and the J6ers generally, not wanting to get his hopes up. Had the country remained coalesced around the accurate original understanding of January 6\u2014that American citizens had been lied to about the 2020 election by the president and had attempted to sack the Capitol partly at his instigation\u2014Webster might have been forced into a reckoning. Instead, he\u2019d been presented with a more appealing framing that squared better with his view of himself as a patriot and a good person: He and other Americans had gone to Washington simply to petition their government about questionable election results and, while there, had been baited by antifa or undercover federal agents into storming the Capitol. This, in turn, reinforced Webster\u2019s own initial claim about his fight with the MPD cop\u2014that Rathbun had provoked the encounter by striking him in the head, then lied about it to counter Webster\u2019s righteous assertion of self-defense, resulting in his wrongful conviction.When Trump officially announced another run for president, in November 2022, it solidified everything Webster believed about Trump\u2014that he was a fighter, that he loved America, that he would not be cowed. Despite all that the government had done to Trump, including impeaching him twice, the ex-president remained unyielding.On Election Night in November 2024, Webster sat in the prison television room, watching the results. By the time he returned to his cell for the inmate head count at 9 p.m., Florida had been called for Trump. Webster spent the next few hours lying on his bunk in the dark, listening to the radio as newscasters called North Carolina for Trump, then Georgia, then Pennsylvania, then the election. Webster drifted off to sleep, full of hope.For the next few weeks, he wondered whether Trump would keep his word about pardoning the J6ers on his first day back in office. He worried that Trump might pardon only some of the 1,600 defendants, and not the supposedly violent ones like him. Or maybe Trump would wait until the end of his term, to avoid any political heat. For Webster, that would mean continuing to languish in prison for years.On Inauguration Day, Webster was anxious. He watched the ceremonies for a few hours, then went back to his cell to rest. Later that evening, a prison guard called out: \u201cWebster! Get down to the lieutenant\u2019s office right now.\u201d Just before midnight, he stepped into the cold Texas night, a free man.[From the February 2026 issue: Jeffrey Goldberg on Donald Trump\u2019s inexcusable pardons]The Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., requires nearly all of its 3,200 officers to work inaugurations, typically one of the longest and most boring days of their career; many calculate how close they are to retirement by how many more inaugurations they still have to work.In January of last year, hundreds of MPD officers who had been at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, were working to safeguard Donald Trump\u2019s second inauguration. To Officer Daniel Hodges, the experience was surreal: The last time he\u2019d seen so many people wearing MAGA hats, they\u2019d been trying to kill him.On that day five years ago, Hodges had reported for duty at sunrise as part of a civil-disturbance unit, CDU 42. The group (25 officers, four sergeants, and one lieutenant) was specially trained in riot tactics: how to deploy large canisters of chemical spray; how to shoot rubber bullets from 40-millimeter launchers; how to perform extractions\u2014fast, targeted operations to remove people from danger. But on that day, January 6, platoon members looked like typical patrol officers, standing in navy-blue uniforms along the blocks of Constitution Avenue leading to the Ellipse, where Trump was holding his rally. Supervisors had not authorized them to wear riot gear, which was stashed in nearby vans, or carry munitions. They\u2019d been told that their assignment was simply to be visible.Hodges watched the crowd flow by, noting that a significant number wore tactical gear such as helmets, goggles, and ballistic vests\u2014not the sort of accoutrements people typically wear to peaceably listen to speeches. Around 11 a.m., a large crowd began streaming back toward the Capitol. Around 1 p.m., the U.S. Capitol Police summoned MPD for help; protesters were attacking officers, crashing through barricades, and climbing scaffolding that had been erected in advance of the inauguration. An MPD commander ordered CDU 42 to the Capitol for backup.A little after 1:30 p.m., Hodges and other officers stood outside their vans putting on hard-shell protective pads that covered their shoulders, shins, and other bones. They listened as a veteran MPD commander at the Capitol began to sound more desperate over the police radio. Officers, some not yet in full gear, rushed into two scout cars and four vans, and sped toward the Capitol. Only two officers had managed to pull on their protective coveralls, stretchy black suits that look like onesies and shield them from flames and chemical spray.On the northwest side of the Capitol, Hodges and other officers arranged themselves in a two-column formation as a sergeant called out orders: \u201cShields down! Cameras on!\u201d As they marched toward the Capitol, Hodges noted that his platoon mates, who had worked many protests together, were grim and silent, as if nervous about what they were about to encounter. Many had never worked at the Capitol and had no idea where to go. An officer on the scene led them toward the West Terrace. As they drew closer, a loud roar filled the air. Taking in the crowd, Hodges saw that police officers were preposterously outnumbered. Each put a hand on the shoulder of the officer in front of them, and they marched into the dense, roiling horde, so thick that the two columns were forced to collapse into a single line. Soon the scene devolved into individual battles between officers and rioters.
\nBrent Stirton \/ Getty
\nPolice try to defend the Capitol against Trump supporters attempting to disrupt the election-certification process.
\nOne rioter tried to rip the baton from Hodges\u2019s hand as he took blows from all sides. Another man, who wore a ballistic vest that bulged with thick protective plates, as if prepared for heavy gunfire, asked, \u201cAre you my brother?\u201d Another said, \u201cYou will die on your knees.\u201d A rioter who\u2019d climbed up scaffolding tossed down something heavy, hitting Hodges in the head. Another man tried to take Hodges\u2019s baton and they fell to the ground, the man kicking Hodges in the chest as they wrestled. Hodges managed to hang on to his baton but then found himself on all fours, surrounded by the mob, terrified that he would soon be torn apart.With the help of colleagues who materialized around him, Hodges managed to stand back up, and he and other platoon members fought their way through the crowd, arriving at the police line in various states of dishevelment. They joined other officers on the West Terrace and tried to keep the crowd at bay. Standing there, Hodges struggled to take in a scene of jarring dissonance: someone waving a flag with Trump\u2019s head atop Rambo\u2019s body; the steady, warlike pounding of a single drum; one angry protester demanding, \u201cI want to speak to a supervisor!\u201d The absolute entitlement of these people, Hodges thought. As minutes passed, Hodges felt as if he could feel the shift and flow of the crowd\u2019s energy, a push of aggression followed by an unsteady lull. A man appeared before Hodges and shouted, \u201cDo you think your little peashooter guns are going to stop this crowd?\u201d Hodges scanned people\u2019s hands for guns and knives, trying to calculate when and whether to use force, how to use just enough to stop the crowd but not inflame it, how any action he took might look later on video.Horrified, he watched the crowd burst through the police line. An MPD commander shouted over the radio: \u201cWe\u2019ve lost the line! All MPD, pull back!\u201d Two men pushed Hodges against a wall; one man reached beneath his protective visor and dug into his right eye with his thumb. Hodges cried out in pain, and managed to shake the man off before his eye was permanently damaged.Standing near the steps of the Capitol, trying to hold back the marauders, Hodges felt that the job was futile: He would fight off one man, and another 20 would appear. Hodges retreated with other officers inside the building. A high-ranking MPD commander, Ramey Kyle, called out, \u201cIt\u2019s gonna be old-school CDU\u201d\u2014civil-disturbance unit\u2014\u201cif they come in those doors, do you hear me?\u201d Officers took that to mean that this was no time for the reform-minded policing of recent years; this fight would be hard and violent. \u201cWe are not losing the U.S. Capitol today!\u201d Kyle shouted.Another officer called out for Hodges\u2019s platoon: \u201c42, come on!\u201d Bracing himself to rejoin the battle, Hodges headed toward the Lower West Terrace tunnel, arriving at a dark concrete hallway about 10 feet wide. There, Hodges saw a few dozen officers in a haze of smoke\u2014rows of four or five stacked shoulder to shoulder\u2014struggling to hold off the hundreds of protesters who\u2019d already breached two sets of doors. Behind those hundreds, thousands more swarmed. The officers believed theirs to be the last line of defense protecting the Capitol. They didn\u2019t know that rioters had already entered the building on the northwest side.Police and the mass of protesters battled for inches. The attackers swayed back and forth, their bodies working as battering rams. The crowd, Hodges realized, had itself become a weapon. When officers got injured or succumbed to exhaustion or pepper spray, they would fall back, other officers stepping forward to take their place in the fray. As officers around him fell, Hodges pressed to the front of the line. The other side was doing the same, calling out, \u201cWe need fresh patriots up here.\u201d Unlike the police, though, the protesters seemed to have an infinite number of replacements.Hodges had worked many protests, particularly during the long summer of 2020, after the killing of George Floyd. In his experience, when demonstrations turned violent, the violence itself was the point, serving as catharsis and release. But this crowd had a singular goal\u2014to get inside the Capitol. Only a handful of exhausted cops, Hodges among them, stood in the breach.Hodges braced himself against a metal door frame to his right. But as soon as he got situated, the momentum shifted. The crowd shouted \u201cHeave, ho!\u201d and pushed toward the officers, pinning Hodges against the door frame. He felt the hard plastic of a police shield that rioters had stolen pressing into his other side.A video\u2014which would soon be viewed by millions of people around the world\u2014captured what happened next. Hodges was trapped, his whole body getting crushed. His arms hung uselessly at his sides. He effectively could not move his legs. A man wrapped his hand around Hodges\u2019s gas mask, violently shoving it back and forth and then ripping it off, shouting what sounded like \u201cHow do you like me now, fucker?\u201d As Hodges stood there, scared and vulnerable, the man grabbed his baton and bashed him on the head with it, rupturing his lip and smashing his skull. The video focused on Hodges\u2019s face, his mouth bloody as he struggled to breathe. Fearing that he would soon collapse and be dragged into the crowd, Hodges did the only thing he could\u2014he screamed for help.Most cops have hero dreams, protector fantasies that sustain them through days that are mostly mundane. The video of Hodges crying out plaintively is the antithesis of how a cop wants to be seen. In the ensuing days and years, Hodges has had to come to terms with that helplessness. He\u2019d bravely advanced to the front of the police line, but in the end, he\u2019d needed rescuing. Like so many people whose lives have been defined by seconds of video from that day, Hodges doesn\u2019t like the story his tells. But he has accepted it, because it\u2019s what happened. Over time, he has learned to laugh when friends joke about how he got his ass kicked on January 6. But the seriousness of his predicament, how close he came to blindness or maybe death, remains ever near; he can still feel the man\u2019s fingers crawling up his cheek toward his eye.A little after 4 p.m., Trump finally submitted to the multiple entreaties from members of Congress, the vice president, and many others and recorded a video telling the protesters to go home. \u201cWe had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side,\u201d he said. \u201cBut you have to go home now. We have to have peace.\u201d He continued: \u201cThere\u2019s never been a time like this where such a thing happened, where they could take it away from all of us\u2014from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election, but we can\u2019t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home.\u201d National Guardsmen and other reinforcements finally began to arrive. At 6:01 p.m., Trump tweeted: \u201cThese are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!\u201dThough the Capitol had been breached and defiled, and the certification proceedings interrupted, police officers like Hodges\u2014and Noah Rathbun; and Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman, who saved lawmakers by redirecting a group of marauders away from the Senate chamber; and Capitol Police Lieutenant Michael Byrd, who in shooting Ashli Babbitt potentially stopped what would have been a surge of rioters toward the House chamber, where members of Congress were hiding\u2014had held off enough of the mob for long enough that no legislators were killed or badly injured. The proceedings could resume, allowing the transfer of power to Joe Biden two weeks later.Hodges and his fellow CDU 42 officers stayed in the Capitol Crypt until late that night, sitting cross-legged and leaning against columns, nursing their wounds. They were battered and exhausted, but would have fought again if they had to, he told me.In the years that followed, Hodges testified in court at his attackers\u2019 criminal trials and sentencing hearings. He believed it was important that they face consequences. He told one judge that he wasn\u2019t a vengeful person; he just wanted what was fair. Two of his attackers from the tunnel, Patrick McCaughey III and Steven Cappuccio, were convicted of multiple felony counts and sentenced to roughly seven years each in prison. The man who dug into his eye, Clifford Mackrell, pleaded guilty to assaulting officers and was sentenced to 27 months.In November 2024, when Americans reelected Trump, Hodges felt a deep sense of grief. During 11 years of policing, he\u2019d seen people do terrible things to one another\u2014shootings, stabbings, maimings. But the election results strained his faith in humanity more than any of that. After all Trump has done? Hodges thought. After all we know about him? His friend Harry Dunn, a former Capitol Police officer who\u2019d been called \u201cnigger\u201d for the first time while in uniform on January 6, later said that seeing the 2024 election unfold was like watching the end of Titanic\u200a: You knew what was coming, but it still hurt to watch. Both Dunn and Hodges long ago grew tired of talk about the \u201cshifting narrative\u201d of January 6. \u201cAin\u2019t no narrative,\u201d Dunn likes to say. \u201cPlay the tape.\u201dAs Hodges worked the inauguration in January 2025, he surveyed the legions of happy people in MAGA hats. The scene befuddled him. \u201cIt was just very baffling to me, how we\u2019d gotten to this point, after everything we\u2019d been through, that people saw fit to vote for him again,\u201d he said. The assembled Trump supporters, none of whom seemed to recognize Hodges, may not have been thinking about the chaos of January 6, 2021, but he was. He thinks about it every day. His physical injuries have healed, but his psychic ones have not; he has PTSD symptoms and has been diagnosed with depression. When Hodges returned home from the inauguration that night and read about the pardons, he wasn\u2019t surprised. He tried to wrap his mind around the idea of another four years of Trump, and around the incongruity of a so-called law-and-order president, hours into his second term, pardoning people who had attacked cops with weapons that included knives, Tasers, bear spray, pepper spray, lumber, bicycle racks, a cattle prod, a sledgehammer, a ladder, a flagpole, a baseball bat, a hockey stick, and a fire extinguisher.
\nUnited States District Court for the District of Columbia<\/p>\n
Annie Flanagan for The Atlantic
\nTop: MPD Officer Daniel Hodges is pinned against a door frame by a riot shield wielded by Trump supporters.
\nBottom: Hodges outside the Capitol, November 2025.
\nHow could this happen in a democracy, propelled by the leaders of a political party that professed to \u201cback the blue\u201d? It was even harder to understand how so many police officers still supported Trump. The Fraternal Order of Police, the profession\u2019s largest union, had endorsed him for a third time in 2024. Certainly there was blame to go around, Hodges believed. He put some of that on Democrats, who\u2019d all but abandoned police after Floyd\u2019s killing.Still, Hodges hoped that there would be some nuance in who received pardons. There was not. Trump did not weigh each case like Solomon: He issued full pardons to almost all of the 1,600 people charged in connection with the insurrection. Of those, about 600 had been charged with resisting arrest or assaulting officers, 175 of them with dangerous or deadly weapons. No matter how big their sin, no matter what all of those judges and juries had decided, almost everyone was just\u2014poof\u2014forgiven. The only (partial) exceptions were the 14 members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys whose sentences Trump commuted, meaning they were released from prison but their convictions were not erased.After the government spent tens of millions of dollars on what the Department of Justice said was one of the largest and most complex investigations in the country\u2019s history, Trump erased it all at a stroke. Roughly 1,000 people had accepted culpability and pleaded guilty. \u201cNo,\u201d Trump\u2019s pardons declared, \u201cyou\u2019re not guilty.\u201d Another 250 people had taken their cases to trial. Only four were acquitted of all charges, according to NPR; the rest were found guilty by judge or jury on at least some counts. Nearly 500 defendants awaited trials or sentencing in 2025. \u201cAnyone who spent any time working on Jan. 6 cases saw how violent a day that was,\u201d Mike Romano, a former U.S. attorney who prosecuted some of those cases, told The New York Times recently. \u201cIt\u2019s incredibly demoralizing to see something you worked on for four years wiped away by a lie\u2014I mean the idea that prosecution of the rioters was a grave national injustice. We had strong evidence against every person we prosecuted.\u201dHodges has watched as the January 6 defendants have been not merely forgiven but extolled, telling their persecution stories at Republican fundraisers as donors snack on meatball platters and charcuterie boards. Sometimes he can\u2019t believe the lengths to which Trump will go to rewrite the history of that day: It was not an insurrection, but a \u201cday of love.\u201d The J6ers were not insurrectionists, traitors, and miscreants but patriots, heroes, and innocents. Hodges worries about the fact that Trump has ordered the Smithsonian to review all of its exhibits in order to \u201crestore truth and sanity.\u201d (One former Capitol Police officer told me that he\u2019d donated the boots he\u2019d worn on January 6 to the Smithsonian, hoping they\u2019d be included in a future exhibit\u2014now he fears they\u2019ll be tossed.)Though other cops sometimes accuse them of grandstanding, of seeking money or fame, Hodges and Dunn and a few others have continued to speak about what happened to them on January 6, because they believe it\u2019s important to prevent history from being rewritten. \u201cIf people would just admit what happened that day, we wouldn\u2019t have to keep telling our stories,\u201d Hodges said. But the efforts of Trump and others to falsify the story, he added, have kept him \u201ctragically relevant.\u201d (Outside of court, many cops have not spoken publicly about their experiences on January 6, including Rathbun.) Hodges says this should not be a partisan issue. He would have defended Trump if he had been attacked at his second inauguration\u2014just as, he says, he would defend the Capitol against an attack by a Democratic mob. \u201cThe second a Democratic president tries to hold on to power illegally, I will go after them hard,\u201d he told me. \u201cUntil such a time, there\u2019s only one person who\u2019s done that.\u201dRecently, I told Hodges that I\u2019d been interviewing Tom Webster about January 6. Hodges vaguely remembered the story about the former NYPD cop who\u2019d assaulted one of his colleagues. When I told him that Webster still believed that the 2020 election may have been stolen, Hodges was not surprised. He doesn\u2019t think people like Webster will stop lying to themselves anytime soon. \u201cThey can\u2019t,\u201d Hodges said; the cognitive dissonance and moral pain would be too great.Accepting reality would mean reevaluating everything they thought they knew\u2014that their actions were ethical and justified, that they are great patriots. Accepting the truth of January 6 would require coming to grips with the fact that they supported a con man and participated in a violent plot to subvert democracy. The immediate reward for undertaking this kind of hard self-examination would mainly be shame and regret.\u201cTo grapple with these truths would, in a very real way, unmake them,\u201d Hodges said.After Thomas Webster was released from prison on January 20, 2025, having served a little more than two years of his 10-year sentence, he went home to a house he\u2019d never seen and a group of people he\u2019d never met. His wife, Michelle, had moved to Mississippi, where members of a church and a J6 support group had adopted her. They brought dinner and a cake to celebrate Webster\u2019s return.He worried that he\u2019d struggle to readjust, but he quickly felt at home. He and Michelle, married for 25 years, had some bumps as they dealt with the damage from that day\u2014social, financial, logistical\u2014but he told me they\u2019ve gotten past those. Webster mourns all that he missed\u2014teaching his youngest son how to drive, moving his middle child into her college dorm, watching his oldest daughter graduate from boot camp. Interactions with his wife\u2019s family remain strained; to this day, no one has told 99-year-old Nana that Webster was in prison.Webster and his wife bought a one-story ranch house, 20 acres in the middle of nowhere. He likes living in Mississippi, where he feels farther from the reach of government and politics. Not long ago, when his daughter called him for help with a flat tire and he was able to drive out to her with a patch kit, he felt grateful to Trump for the pardon that allowed him to do that.
\nAnnie Flanagan for The Atlantic
\nWebster in his garage in Mississippi, November 2025. He says he barely recognizes the version of himself who drove to Washington five years ago. But he still believes that the 2020 election may have been stolen.
\nOver time, Webster has opened up, telling the people he\u2019s gotten to know at the Toccopola Grocery, an old country store with checkered red-and-white tablecloths and vintage Coca-Cola signs, what he\u2019s been through. He sent them a video about his case, one of the few that he thought rendered his story accurately\u2014that he\u2019d gone to petition his government peacefully and had been assaulted by an aggressive cop. Webster can\u2019t determine if they believe him or not but, unlike some folks back in New York, they seem open-minded. \u201cAin\u2019t our place to judge,\u201d they say to him.Webster remains frustrated that the full story of January 6, in his view, has yet to be told. Trump freed him and his fellow patriots from physical prison, Webster told me, \u201cbut we\u2019re not truly free until people know the truth.\u201dWhen I asked Webster what the truth is, he said he believes that the 2020 election was probably stolen. (About a third of Americans share this belief, even though no credible evidence has ever emerged to support the claim, and dozens of courts have rejected it.) He believes that the federal government made an organized effort to entrap Trump\u2019s biggest supporters on January 6. And he believes that, in pursuing the J6 defendants so mercilessly, the government attempted to silence them, by terrifying them and other conservatives across the country.Webster has filed a petition to the court asking that it vacate his conviction, arguing that crucial facts were not known during his trial that could have led to him being found not guilty. Even though he\u2019s now been pardoned, Webster told me he felt it was important to document his entire story for the record, preserving it for future generations to consider during \u201cmore stable times.\u201dI pointed out to Webster that he had apologized to Officer Rathbun in court. Wasn\u2019t that a concession that he\u2019d acted wrongly on January 6? In response, Webster said that, although he feels \u201cbad about how the whole day went down,\u201d his apology should not be taken as an admission of guilt: \u201cI was pressured by my lawyer to apologize. He said it would help me reduce my sentence.\u201dWebster is disappointed by where things stand now: With Trump in office and MAGA conservatives in power, they finally have the ability to prove what happened that day\u2014so why aren\u2019t they? When Dan Bongino was a podcaster, he repeatedly asserted that undercover agents embedded in the crowd had helped orchestrate January 6; now that Trump has made him deputy director of the FBI, why isn\u2019t Bongino releasing the evidence? Webster feels similarly disappointed in FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi. \u201cWhy are you guys always bragging about arresting illegal Mexicans doing roof work?\u201d he asked. He wonders why they\u2019re not instead exposing the plots of the deep state, as Trump has demanded. Webster believes that Bongino and Patel have become polluted by the same swamp that Trump has again and again vowed to clean up.Webster says he barely recognizes the version of himself who drove to D.C. five years ago. Who was that man filled with so much bravado that he thought he could save the country? His days of charging into the fray are over, he said. Sometimes he feels guilty about the life he has now. So many of the J6 defendants have been divorced by their wives, disowned by their kids, fired from their jobs. By Webster\u2019s count, at least five have died by suicide. Yet he still views Trump as the best hope for cleaning out the deep state. \u201cHe\u2019s the one person I still kind of believe in,\u201d Webster said.Recently, he was asked to speak at an event with other J6 defendants. He\u2019d felt fine as he\u2019d approached the podium, full of thoughts to share. But as he stood onstage, he was overcome with emotion. Scenes from that day flashed through his mind: the cop with the gas mask. The feel of the flagpole in his hand. Their tug-of-war. His own rage.As Webster looked out at the members of the crowd, he thought they\u2019d probably Google him when they got home. Which video clip would they find? he wondered\u2014would it tell the right story or the wrong one? Would they see him as a felon or a patriot? Which truth would they believe?On his way home, Webster told his wife that he wouldn\u2019t speak at any more events. Reliving what they\u2019d been through was too painful. And he didn\u2019t see much point until the whole story was revealed. So he waits for the truth to solidify into something firm enough to stand on, a day he fears may never come.This article appears in the February 2026 print edition with the headline \u201cIs This What Patriotism Looks Like?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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