Former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn prides himself on telling the truth.
When it comes to January 6, though, he and the truth often appear to be at odds.
That is the powerful contention in a new Blaze Media video production, “A Day in the Life of Harry Dunn: Part One — A Leisurely Pace,” streaming on BlazeTV and social media.
The video chronicles some of the tales told by the most famous police officer on Jan. 6 — and then reveals what really happened.
Steve Baker, a Blaze News investigative reporter who researched and narrated the production, said Dunn’s carefully crafted story — told before Congress, on network talk shows, and in his best-selling book — is nothing but fiction.
“Everything he did to establish his fame was done deceptively,” Baker said, recalling Dunn’s dramatic retelling of a briefing he attended at the Capitol early on Jan. 6. It was a meeting that security video proves never took place.
“When one opens their own narrative with so much detail about the time, the location, the content of the meeting that never happened,” Baker said in the film, “well, then everything else he says about January 6 must be called into question.”
‘Harry rose to fame based on deception and lies.’
Just as more doubts began to emerge about his truthfulness in 2024, Dunn retired from the Capitol Police. After a losing bid for the U.S. House of Representatives, Dunn joined the presidential campaigns of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I don’t think it’s a stretch of the imagination, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration, to say that we are one election away from the extinction of democracy as we know it,” Dunn told CBS News when he announced his bid for Congress.
During a presidential election panel discussion in Michigan in August, Dunn said news accounts undersold the amount of violence he and other officers experienced on Jan. 6 at the hands of Trump supporters.
“The violence that you saw was probably 10, 100 times worse than what the cameras portrayed it to be,” Dunn said in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn laughs with President Joe Biden before Dunn is awarded a Presidential Citizens Medal at the White House on Jan. 6, 2023.Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Dunn was not the target of violence on Jan. 6. The Blaze Media investigation showed how Dunn’s dramatic tales about his actions on Jan. 6 don’t match thousands of hours of Capitol Police security video that Baker reviewed. Security footage shows Dunn’s stories simply don’t match the evidence.
Baker got the initial idea for the video while listening to Dunn testify for the prosecution in the first Oath Keepers trial in October 2022. The details Dunn shared not only didn’t add up, they were different from what he told the FBI in his first meeting with agents in 2021, Baker said.
Baker discovered that Capitol Police Special Agent David Lazarus could not have witnessed an alleged confrontation Dunn had with the Oath Keepers. Dunn testified under oath that Lazarus was present near the Small House Rotunda with the Oath Keepers. But at the time Dunn claimed it took place, Lazarus was on the other side of the Capitol.
As Baker dug into more of Dunn’s public statements and media appearances, other problems became apparent.
Included among them was Dunn’s contention that he engaged in “hand-to-hand combat” with rioters and that fellow officers were carried away on stretchers during the worst violence of Jan. 6.
Then there was Dunn’s most widely repeated story of a group of 50 white-supremacist Trump supporters chanting the N-word when he told them he voted for Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
A review of hundreds of hours of footage from that day, tracking Dunn’s whereabouts, did not uncover any evidence that any such “hand-to-hand combat” or racially charged interactions occurred.
“The key to the story is that Harry rose to fame based on deception and lies,” Baker said.
Dunn testified under oath before the now-defunct Jan. 6 Select Committee. He made countless television appearances on CNN, MSNBC, and the ABC talk show “The View.” He received a Presidential Citizens Medal from Biden at the White House in 2023.
Dunn’s 2023 memoir, “Standing My Ground,” received widespread media attention. Baker said the book, much like Dunn’s other public testimonies, is “a gold mine of lies.”
Capitol Police and Dunn did not respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.
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