Donald Trump Jr. recently took to Twitter and posted a video clip with the caption:
“It’s so disgusting that good patriots were denied due process and are rotting in jail because of a completely made up narrative sold by these crisis actors. They should all be fired and those whose lies resulted in jail for innocent people should be jailed themselves.”
It’s so disgusting that good patriots were denied due process and are rotting in jail because of a completely made up narrative sold by these crisis actors. They should all be fired and those whose lies resulted in jail for innocent people should be jailed themselves. https://t.co/azuA1kzRU2
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 19, 2023
Aquilino Gonell, who moved to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic at the age of 12, believed he’d live the American dream if he put his head down and worked hard as a student, a U.S. Army veteran and a policeman which a myth passed on to many other immigrants of his generation.
It has been noted that then the Jan. 6 insurrection happened nearly three decades later leaving Gonell’s career as a Capitol Police officer and his belief in the American system in tatters.
Staying silent was no longer an option, not when he believed Republican leaders were trying to mischaracterize the insurrection as a peaceful protest. Gonell decided he’d speak up, first in front of a camera, and later to the House Jan. 6 committee.
“As an immigrant, I took seriously my pledge to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States against foreign and domestic threats. Even if that threat was the president, the police, and the members of Congress who abetted him,” he writes in his memoir “American Shield: The Immigrant Sergeant Who Defended Democracy,” which publishes Nov. 7. (A Spanish version titled “Escudo Americano” will publish the following month.)
Speaking up has come at a price: Trump loyalists such as Julie Kelly, a political commentator, have vilified police officers like Gonell who testified at the congressional Capitol riot hearing, calling them “crisis actors.”
