U.S. Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger, who is retiring this week, told CBS News on Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s pardons for people who participated in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021 were a “slap in the face to every police officer that was here” on that day.
Manger, who took over the position of Capitol Police Chief about six months after the event, described the challenges he faced on the job.
“The department as a whole had lost confidence in the leadership as a result of what happened” on Jan. 6, he said.
Manger added: “There were big things that were identified as things that needed to be fixed as quickly as we could fix them: Things like the intelligence failures, the communication failures, the equipment failures, the training failures, the leadership failures — all of those things needed to be addressed immediately.”
He also rejected conspiracy theories that have spread that downplay the riot.
“My folks were here on Jan. 6. They were part of what went on. They were assaulted. They were in fights,” Manger said. “Many of them were injured. They know exactly what happened on Jan. 6. For somebody to make up some story that, ‘Oh, it wasn’t that bad’ — it is just not true.”
Manger went on to describe the Capitol riot as “probably one of my worst days in this job,” adding that the pardons for rioters are “a chilling message to law enforcement.”
“We’ve got a job to do, and we don’t care what the issue is,” he said. “We don’t care what side of the coin you’re on on any particular issue because we have a job to do, to maintain public order and to keep the peace.
“It was, I think, a slap in the face to every police officer that was here.”
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
