Donald Trump has opened campaign rallies with a recording entitled “Justice For All” featuring the J6 Prison Choir singing “The Star Spangled Banner” intercut with the former president reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. The recording, released in March 2023, was recorded by prisoners in a D.C. jail held on more serious charges resulting from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that Trump is accused of instigating. The Washington Post identified five of the roughly 15 men featured in the J6 choir video, with four of them as being charged with “assaulting police using weapons such as a crowbar, sticks and chemical spray, including against Officer Brian D. Sicknick, who died the next day.”
And yet, as HuffPost observed, police unions so far “have not offered a single word of criticism” over Trump’s continued glorification of the accused and convicted criminals who attacked Capitol Police and D.C. Metro officers on Jan. 6.
Earlier this month, one police union, the International Union of Police Associations, which is an AFL-CIO member, endorsed Trump for president, stirring outrage among some of the Capitol Police officers attacked in the insurrection. The IUPA also endorsed Trump over Joe Biden in 2020.
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Back in 2020, some unions called for the AFL-CIO to expel the IUPA for failing to actively address racism in law enforcement and especially to hold officers accountable for the killings of George Floyd and other Black people by police.
IUPA president Sam A. Cabral actually had the temerity to write in his Trump endorsement:
President Trump’s history of support for the men and women of Law Enforcement is unmatched. His policies and actions were directed at improving safety in our communities and the men and women who provide that shield. He has earned and deserves our wholehearted support.
Cabral’s statement made no mention of Jan. 6. But he did list a litany of complaints about Democrats, echoing right-wing talking points: defunding the police, sanctuary cities, open borders, and reduced accountability for criminal behavior.
Harry Dunn, a Black former Capitol Police officer who struggled against the violent mob on Jan. 6, told HuffPost that the IUPA’s endorsement of Trump was “a slap in the face,” but didn’t come as any surprise. After all, Republican lawmakers and everyday Americans readily support Trump despite what he did.
“There were police officers and, hell, military officers, both current and former, there on Jan. 6 participating in crime,” Dunn told HuffPost.
He added: “I don’t think that police officers are the exception to the rule of people supporting someone who doesn’t have their best interest at heart.”
Last month, Dunn announced that he was running for Congress. He entered a crowded Democratic primary field in the race to succeed the retiring Rep. John Sarbanes in Maryland’s 3rd Congressional District.
And this comes at a time when Trump, his MAGA supporters in Congress like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, and right-wing media have all been engaged in a campaign to whitewash what happened on Jan. 6. Trump has pledged to pardon jailed Jan. 6 insurrectionists. The Guardian quoted Trump as saying, “Some people call them prisoners. I call them hostages. Release the J6 hostages, Joe [Biden]. Release them, Joe. You can do it real easy, Joe.”
Last month, on the third anniversary of the insurrection, Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said Jan 6. was “likely the largest single-day, mass assault of law enforcement officers in our nation’s history,” CNN reported.
“One hundred and forty officers guarding the Capitol that day reported physical injury, but we know from talking to the hundreds of officers guarding the Capitol that day that this 140 number undercounts the number of officers who were physically injured, let alone those who have suffered trauma as a result of the day’s events,” Graves said.
HuffPost said an employee of the Florida-based IUPA declined to comment on the Trump endorsement. And HuffPost added that the 375,000-member Fraternal Order of Police, which is not officially a labor union, has said nothing about Trump’s praise for the Jan. 6 attackers. The FOP represents the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C., and the Capitol Police.
Former D.C. Metro police officer Michael Fanone, who was attacked with a stun gun by a Trump supporter on Jan. 6 and then suffered a heart attack, told HuffPost there was a disturbing reason for the reluctance of police organizations such as the FOP to speak out against what happened on Jan. 6.
“Lots of officers are ideologically aligned with the people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6,” he said. “I get more threatening phone calls from people who identify as police officers than anyone else. We’ve been dismissed and vilified by even our police union.”
Fanone said that a member of the J6 Prison Choir “is one of the guys who assaulted me.”
The Center for Policy & Research at Seton Hall University, in a report released in July 2023, analyzed the backgrounds of 716 people who were arrested on charges relating to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. The report said:
Another notable finding from the report include that 18.5 percent of the 716 insurrectionists had a background in law enforcement or the military: 28 had a background in law enforcement while 105 had a military background. Among the felons, including the conspirators, there were 105 military members or veterans. Of the 105, 68 were charged as felons—21 charged with conspiracy. Of the 105 military-affiliated insurrectionists, 31 (or 29.5%) were part of groups, with 13 Proud Boys, 12 Oath Keepers, and six Three Percenters.
There were also 28 members or former members of law enforcement, of which 17 were charged with felonies—4 charged with conspiracy. Although 15 of these law enforcement insurrectionists were captured through tips, none were tips by family members.
Trump, of course, is facing criminal charges for his actions in the weeks leading up to and on Jan. 6 in the indictment brought against him by special counsel Jack Smith for allegedly conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
In his Trump endorsement statement, Cabral wrote the the IUPA is “proud … to be the first national law enforcement organization to endorse and demonstrate our unwavering support and loyalty for President Donald J. Trump.”
But the IUPA does share something in common with Trump. The Center for Public Integrity, which puts the IUPA’s membership at more than 15,000, reported in 2019 that only “a sliver of the donations” given to the Law Enforcement Officers Relief Fund, a nonprofit set up by the IUPA to help the families of fallen or injured officers, actually went to help those families. Instead, the CPI wrote that “most of the money the nonprofit charity raises winds up with telemarketers paid to solicit donors.” Trump, with his “Stop the Steal” funds and pocketing of donor cash, certainly isn’t a stranger to taking advantage of those who believe in him.
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