navigate my way through the crowd. it was basically self-preservation and deescalation and i needed to get up those steps. i couldn t say what would have happened walking through that crowd without it. but for the crime of wearing a trump hat, johnson found himself suspended. ultimately, he resigned from the force and lost his pension. he now works part-time as a furniture mover. pitman, meanwhile, thrived. two days after january 6th, nanci pelosi elevated pitman to acting chief of the capitol police. late last year, pitman took a high-paying job as the head of security at uc berkeley which is right outside pelosi s congressional district. berkley announced pitman s hiring with unqualified praise for her steadfast commitment to social justice. pitman herself boasted about her heroic performance on january 6th. her department, she said, saved democracy that day. we reached out to pitman for comment but she didn t get back to us.
himself. the person that i thought was going to authorize the evacuation didn t do it. i wanted to get those members of congress out as quickly as i could. that s why i initiated, um, you know, those evacuations. me being disciplined, it wasn t as important as not getting the members of congress and their staff to safety. footage we reviewed seems to bolster johnson s account. the video shows johnson conducting the evacuation of senators from the chamber. yet tarek johnson wasn t rewarded for what he did. he was punished. a photo emerged of johnson wearing a ma ga hat outside of the capitol. that picture cost him his career. sometimes i look at it and go thank you, god, for blessing me with this hat and sometimes i m like, wow! i wish this hat never came into my life. a biden voter, johnson says he donned the hat in an effort to rescue fellow officers he believed were trapped in the building. i figured if i had the hat on, it would be easier for me to
tarek johnson spent 22 years as a capitol police officer on january 6th. he says he was in charge of securing the certification of the presidential elections. so he was right in the middle of it. if anyone was, tarek johnson was. here is more of our sitdown interview with him. thank you for joining us. thank you for having me. tucker: from the outside, here s how it looked. we now know huge parts of the federal government were aware there was going to be something big happening at the capitol on january 6th. they knew there were going to be big demonstrations there, and they prepared for that, but the capitol police on which you served for 22 years did not seem prepared at all and, of course, that would be the front line in preparedness. was the capitol police prepared for that day? the front-line officers and supervisors were not prepared for that at all. tucker: when you say at all you had no idea it was coming? we knew there was going to be a demonstration that day but w
anything on the radio. according to johnson, pitman kept vital information about the protests from front-line officers like him. pitman was the assistant chief of the department in charge of intelligence operations. we should have been better prepared that day and we could have been better prepared that day if the information was dissim nateed like it was supposed to be disseminated like it was supposed to be. once protesters moved inside the building, johnson s first concern was the safety of senators. his job was to protect them. in rising panic, he called over the radio for direction and assistance. even now, two years later, he s baffled by the response he got. i was requesting permission to evacuate the senate side, the senate chambers, because i had a clear line of sight to get them out the senate door, and i didn t get permission. the dispatcher called a couple times to see if i could get permission. no response. with him onto pitman and the other supervisors unrespon