(C) Iowa Capital Dispatch
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'I've been through hell' says Jan. 6 Capitol Police officer slated to keynote Iowa political event • Iowa Capital Dispatch [1]
['Douglas Burns', 'Robin Opsahl', 'Shauneen Miranda', 'Jennifer Shutt', 'More From Author', 'July', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline']
Date: 2025-07-21
A former Capitol Police officer who stood the ground between hundreds of members of Congress and insurrectionists during the Jan. 6 attack is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at a Council Bluffs, Iowa political event Sunday, July 27.
Harry Dunn, a now-departed United States Capitol Police officer who testified before Congress on the Jan. 6, 2021 siege at the capitol, became a high-profile representative of the experience for other peace officers — many who were injured, some who died.
Dunn said the prospect of a full-scale slaughter of elected officials Jan. 6, some of the nation’s top leaders in both parties, was within literal feet, an instant here or there, in the run of events, from happening.
“Members of Congress were being told to take their pins off because they didn’t know if people would recognize that,” Dunn said in a phone interview with The Iowa Mercury. “We were a couple of right turns, and wrong turns by the insurrectionists, away from it being a bloodbath.”
Dunn will speak at an event hosted by the Pottawattamie County Democratic Party from 1-3:30 p.m. Sunday, July 27 at The Grass Wagon, 110 S. 29th St., Council Bluffs. Tickets can be purchased in advance here or at the door. The event is a fundraiser for the Pottawattamie County Democratic Party.
“There’s so much to do and it’s not one person or two people that’s going to save the country,” Dunn said. “We need everybody. The message that I give is more a message of resilience. And I end it usually when I talk to people with ‘I haven’t quit yet. And I’ve been though hell.’ I get death threats weekly. It used to be daily, but it’s kind of gone down a little bit.”
For his part, Dunn is the author of the book “Standing My Ground: A Capitol Police Officer’s Fight for Accountability and Good Trouble After January 6th.”
Dunn ran for Congress as a Democrat in Maryland in 2024, but fell short in a primary before starting a political action committee, Democracy Defenders, which supports candidates who take on what the PAC calls “MAGA extremists and the massive Super PACs that undermine our democracy.”
“After Jan. 6 my whole life changed, everything changed, as everybody saw on TV,” Dunn said in the interview.
Dunn lays the uprising at the Capitol squarely at the feet of President Donald Trump, whom he sees as a threat to democracy. On the the first day of his second term in the Oval Office, Trump granted clemency to those involved in the Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol.
“The reason why I continue to speak out is to seek accountability, to make sure that something like that never happens, that it didn’t get whitewashed,” Dunn said.
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