Photo via @ryanjreilly/Twitter
December 1, 2021, 12:38 pm
Security footage from an FBI interrogation of accused Capitol rioter Danny Rodriguez shows the young man breaking down into tears as he seems to admit to tasering D.C. Officer Mike Fanone, who suffered a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury from being repeatedly shocked at the base of his neck. As FBI agents question Rodriguez about the attack in the recently released footage, he calls himself a “piece of s–t” while calling Fanone a “human being” and says that he doesn’t know why he did what he did to the officer.
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“What do you want me to tell you? That I tased him? Yes,” he says. “Am I a f—ing piece of s–t? Yes.”
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“Why did you tase him?” the agent asks.
“I don’t know, I’m a piece of s–t,” Rodriguez says as he begins to cry. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. He’s a human being with children, and he’s not a bad guy. He sounds like he’s just doing his job.”
The insurrectionist goes on to state that he received the taser from strangers in the crowd, refusing to implicate his friends. According to Rodriguez, he and his cohorts did “prepare” for a fight that day, but he claims that they expected the “battle” to be against Black Lives Matter and anti-fascist activists, who did not show up largely out of fear of the exact violence that left Fanone with a brain injury.
“The preparations were for BLM and Antifa. We thought that they were going to go — we thought we were going to hit it like a civil war,” he said. “There was going to be a big battle. This is what I thought. I thought that there was going to be fighting, for some reason, in different cities and I thought that the main fight, the main battle, was going to be in D.C. because Trump called everyone there.”
In addition parts of the footage, Rodriguez does attempt to explain why he shocked Fanone so many times as he did, trying to claim that he thought if the officer stopped struggling against the people who were assaulting him with flag poles and such, it could protect him from worse treatment.
“I mean, that sounds stupid. I don’t know if I tasered him to protect him, but maybe just to, like — so he wouldn’t struggle and get hurt, maybe,” he told the agents. “If they’re going to beat him up or injury him or, like — I don’t know if they’re going to — I don’t know what was going to happen to him.”
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This defense is unlikely to hold water in court, where Rodriguez could face a longer sentence than any Capitol rioter so far.
During other parts of the interrogation, Rodriguez expresses similar sentiments to other disillusioned Trump fans who have been questioned by authorities about their role in the January 6 assault, saying that he thought the mob was going to save the nation by overturning a corrupted election. He goes so far as to express fears that he is “crazy” or “stupid” for believing the lines fed to him by Trump and thinking of himself as a “good guy” who was doing what was needed for the country.
“I thought that I was doing the right thing. I thought it was all going to be different. I thought Trump was going to stay President. I don’t know. I just can’t believe my life, what I did to it.”
Rodriguez cited Alex Jones’ InfoWars and far-right YouTube commentators such as Steven Crowder, Mark Dice, and the “Hodgetwins” as key to his indoctrination into extremist thinking and joined the army after Trump won the 2016 election, saying he showed up to the recruitment office in a pro-Trump shirt. He was identified as the man who tasered Fanone thanks to online sleuths, many of whom identify as anti-fascists and recognized him from other, less horrifying Trump rallies and protests.
*First Published: December 1, 2021, 12:38 pm
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