January 6 Attack

Floor Speech

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Mr. IVEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my distinguished colleague from South Carolina and certainly my distinguished colleague from Maryland for giving us the opportunity to speak on this issue tonight, the fifth anniversary of that tragic day of the attack on this Capitol.

I want to focus on two men who were here that day. One was Nathan Tate. He was a police officer who had grown up in Prince George's County. He had mixed feelings about what the police do because he had had some bad experiences in his childhood and in his neighborhood, but he decided he could make a difference.

He felt called to public service as a police officer. When he went to work, he joined the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., and was sent to some of the toughest neighborhoods in Washington, where I had actually been a prosecutor many years before.

On that tragic day, he was one of the 140 officers who were attacked and injured. Fortunately, he was not one of the four who died that day. Another one died the next day. Four officers committed suicide in the wake of the trauma that they had experienced that day.

Mr. Tate was attacked and temporarily blinded by bear spray. He hit his head on the scaffold as he was knocked to the ground and lost consciousness temporarily. He was afraid he wouldn't make it home that night to see his six children. He didn't know if he was going to make it.

His attacker was a man named Andrew Taake. Mr. Taake later pled guilty to attacking officers, including Mr. Tate, with bear spray and a metal whip.

You heard a moment ago that our President and some of our Republican colleagues said that this was a tourist event, but I know not many tourists bring bear spray and whips to the Capitol. The man who attacked him was also a fugitive from justice at the time he came here. He had been released on bond from Texas. He was a 32-year-old man, and he was charged with online solicitation of a minor.

Fortunately, it was an undercover officer posing as a 15-year-old girl, but there was an arrest warrant out for his arrest at the time he came here and launched that attack.

He ended up pleading guilty and accepting responsibility in front of the judge, or so he said, because when you plead guilty, the prosecutor reads a statement of what you have done and you have to swear under oath that that statement is true.

He did that, but at the same time, he had been bragging about attacking these officers. Later, he came out and denied responsibility for what he had done. In fact, he said Officer Tate had attacked him.

The judge in that case was appointed by Donald J. Trump. He heard all the evidence, he heard the guilty plea and the evidence that both sides presented, and he sentenced Mr. Taake to 6 years in jail. Donald Trump's pardon wiped that away with the stroke of a pen.

Mr. Tate, formerly Officer Tate, felt so betrayed by what had happened--not just that day, not just by the way some Members of Congress have responded to what happened that day, and not just by the pardon--that he actually left the police department. He didn't feel he could be a police officer again. However, he was still committed to public service that now he is a middle school teacher in Charles County, Maryland, continuing to do outstanding work.

Actually, The Washington Post article that profiled him today showed that he talked about this issue today or this week with the children in his class. He is trying to continue to serve. He is trying to continue to make a difference. He is trying to make a difference for the next generation. He had life-altering scars that he suffered that day. Many of our colleagues had life-altering scars that they suffered that day. Our Nation suffered life-altering scars that day. We need to commit today that it will never happen again.

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