Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell ripped GOP rally goers in Virginia who pledged allegiance to a flag flown by rioters on Jan. 6, telling CNN’s Jim Acosta that the move was “a total disgrace.”
“They were in the crowd when I was fighting those people off, they were throwing the flag on the floor and…wanted us to pick it up and they got angrier and angrier about it,” Gonell said Saturday. “The way they’re using the flag as if they did something good. And that flag they’re probably holding right now… that probably was the flag that they hit me with.”
The pledge occurred on Wednesday night, at a Trump Rally for [Glenn] Youngkin, the GOP candidate for Virginia. (Youngkin later said he had no role in the event and called the pledge “weird and wrong.”)
During the events of Jan. 6, Gonell previously said that he and other officers were “punched, pushed, kicked, shoved, sprayed with chemical irritants and even blinded with eye-damaging lasers.”
He required surgery on his foot and shoulder, and still suffers from physical and psychological injuries.
Gonell went on to criticize former President Donald Trump for sending a message of support to the family of Ashli Babbitt, the veteran killed on Jan. 6, but not to the family of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick.
“Instead of celebrating [police officers] as a party of law and order and pro-police, back the blue, they are celebrating this individual who committed an attack in the Capitol,” Gonell said. “You know, it’s very disappointing.”
Asked about Steve Bannon‘s evasion of a subpoena from the January 6th select House committee, Gonell said that justice for him “would be holding people accountable,” especially Trump.
“He needs to be held accountable in order for me to feel like justice has been served,” Gonell said. “Another person that I feel strongly about is Mr. [Rudy] Giuliani. He told the crowd, ‘trial by combat.’ And guess what? That is exactly what we encountered at the lower west entrance of the Capitol.”
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