photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Michael Fanone speaks at Lawrence event hosted by Leading Kansas on March 1, 2026.

Among the misnomers of Jan. 6 is that there was a “fight” between police and members of the crowd who were intent on breaching the U.S. Capitol that day. Yes, there was violence, but it would be inaccurate to call the day’s frontline activity a fight.

So says a police officer who was in the thick of it, and on Sunday also was in Lawrence to not only retell the events of Jan. 6, but urge a crowd of about 500 in downtown Lawrence to defend democracy.

“You couldn’t slide a credit card between two people,” Michael Fanone, a former Metro Washington D.C. police officer who was defending the Capitol on Jan. 6, said of the mass of people who were surging toward the Capitol. “So the idea that we were throwing punches and all of that, you couldn’t even cock your fist back to throw a punch.

“It was literally body weight pressed against body weight. Us trying to push them out. Them trying to push us in, and that went on for a considerable amount of time.”

Fanone lost on that day. He was beaten and tased after members of the crowd restrained him and threw him to the ground. He suffered both a traumatic brain injury and a heart attack as a result of the riot.

His weight was the lesser of the two on Jan. 6, 2021.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Michael Fanone, left, speaks during a Lawrence event on March 1, 2026. At right is event moderator Noah Taylor of the group Lead Kansas.

But he told a capacity crowd at Maceli’s Banquet Hall on Sunday morning that ordinary Americans have plenty of weight to push back against individuals who believe in everything from a 2020 stolen presidential election to the idea that Donald Trump should be eligible to serve a third term as president.

“People often ask me, ‘what can we do, what can we do?'” said Fanone, who left the police force and has travelled the country as an activist arguing for accountability for those leading the Jan. 6 attack. “Like, we are already doing it. You’re seeing it play out in the streets of Minneapolis. You’re seeing it play out in the streets of Chicago.

“You have average, everyday citizens engaging, filming, documenting these encounters.You have hundreds, thousands of local organizations that have been born out of this moment.”

One message Fanone had to the crowd is to remain armed with their cameras.

“I mean the reason why we are all so outraged about this moment is because we were all watching it play out in our social media feeds all day long, every day. That’s because of the courage of local residents to step outside our front door and rather than turning a blind eye to something that is happening — not necessarily to them, but to vulnerable members of their community — is exactly how you combat this moment.”

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Michael Fanone participates in rally beneath the bandstand at South Park on March 1, 2026.

Fanone was in Lawrence as part of an event hosted by Leading Kansas, a statewide, nonpartisan organization that works to ensure government accountability. The Lawrence chapter of the organization has about 150 active members, Lawrence organizer Jim Otten said.

Otten urged the crowd to think broadly about how America has gotten into a situation where thousands stormed the U.S. Capitol to protest the results of an election.

“We have to be clear-eyed,” Otten said. “We are all responsible for this. It is not just them versus us. As a nation, we’ve become privileged and we’ve become complacent. We didn’t pay attention. So our actions, our inactions are contributing to it, and we the people have to change it.”

Fanone told the standing-room-only crowd at Maceli’s how his day unfolded on Jan. 6. He was a narcotics officer in Washington, D.C., and hadn’t been a beat cop for more than a decade. But when he began hearing reports of armed individuals approaching the Capitol, he put on a uniform and “self-deployed” to the Capitol site.

After a nine-month recovery from his injuries, he returned to the police force but left the department and law enforcement after believing that many in the government and the department were not doing enough to push back against the narrative that questioned how violent the Jan. 6 rally actually became.

He said at one point he felt law enforcement had been abandoned by the Republicans who were reluctant to call out those who had attacked police officers on Jan. 6, and demonized by Democrats who were still often calling for the defunding of police departments following police shootings across the country.

He said he’s seen hundreds of law enforcement officers resign in the wake of Jan. 6.

“It was not the trauma of the day,” Fanone said. “It was how we were treated afterwards.”

Fanone, who quit the department before he was eligible for a pension, became employed by CNN, after having asked the then CNN-journalist Don Lemon for a job. Fanone previously had leaked a copy of his body camera footage from Jan. 6 to Lemon in an effort to counter the growing narrative that the Jan. 6 crowd had not actually been that violent.

Fanone ended up working as a law enforcement analyst for CNN for a little more than a year, but quit after becoming upset with a changing direction at the network, which he said cared more about audience numbers than the truth.

Now, he has traveled to nearly all 50 states to push back against the counter narrative of Jan. 6 as a peaceful gathering of patriots. He’s also become a frequent figure on social media. In January he was part of a viral video where — as a member of the audience at a Congressional hearing for former special prosecutor Jack Smith — Fanone coughed into his hands while uttering an expletive at a U.S. House member who had argued that police actions on Jan. 6 had led to some of the violence. He’s also engaged in expletive-laden shouting matches with conservative online personalities, including one caught by C-SPAN cameras before a Congressional hearing.

On Sunday, Fanone said there likely would be more of those episodes from him, as he said he’s willing to do what it takes to draw attention to those who tell lies about Jan. 6 and the violence that occurred at the Capitol.

As for what others should do, Fanone said they should vote, support candidates who understand the plight of ordinary Americans, and be prepared to stand up for the Constitution, no matter the threats.

“We’ve got to get to a point in this country,” Fanone, said, “where we start believing that Donald Trump is actually going to to do the things that he says he’s going to do . . . We need to prepare for this. We need to prepare for the worst.”

In the meantime, Fanone urged the crowd — which was heavily comprised of opponents of President Trump — to continue doing more of what they’ve already started.

“Continue the protests, continue making noise, continue getting people involved,” Fanone said.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

A crowd gathers beneath the bandstand in South Park on March 1, 2026 to hear former police officer Michael Fanone speak about serving at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.