When Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., asked Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell to respond to former President Donald Trump saying, "It was a loving crowd, there was a lot of love in the crowd," Gonell blasted the former president and placed responsibility on him for sending the mob that attacked them.

"It’s a pathetic excuse for his behavior for something that he himself helped to create, this monstrosity," Gonell said. "I'm still recovering from those 'hugs and kisses' that day."

"If that was hugs and kisses, we should all go to his house and do the same thing to him," he added. "To me, it's insulting, it's demoralizing because everything that we did was to prevent everyone in the Capitol from getting hurt." (He later apologized for the comment, saying before answering another question, "Before I start, by no means am I suggesting that we will go to his house. I apologize for my outburst.")

Gonell went on to counter those who claim it wasn’t Trump supporters at the Capitol to illustrate how Trump could have stopped them.

"It was not antifa, it was not Black Lives Matter, it was not the FBI. It was his supporters that he sent over to the Capitol that day. He could have done a lot of things," he said.

"He talks about sacrifices. The only thing he has sacrificed is the institutions of the country and the country itself only for his ego, because he wants the job, but he doesn't want to do the job. That's a shame on him himself," Gonell added.

Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn recalled the racist verbal abuse he endured from rioters on Jan. 6 and, in emotional testimony, said it was the first time he had been called a racial slur in uniform.

"I'm a law enforcement officer and I do my best to keep politics out of my job, but in this circumstance I responded, well, I voted for Joe Biden, does my vote not count? Am I nobody?'" he said he said to rioters who falsely called the election stolen.

"That prompted a torrent of racial epithets," Dunn continued.

"I sat down on the bench in the rotunda with a friend of mine, who is also a Black capitol police officer and told him about the racial slurs I endured. I became very emotional and began yelling, 'How the blank could something like this happen? Is this America?'" he said. "I began sobbing."

Dunn said that in the days following the attempted insurrection, other Black officers shared similar stories of racial abuse.

Metropolitan Police Department officer Daniel Hodges, who was crushed in a doorway on Jan. 6, recalled how he had to wrestle with one rioter who tried to take his baton and another shouted at him, "'You will die on your knees.'"

Hodges, as Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn has before, called the rioters "terrorists" throughout his testimony.

"The terrorists alternated between attempting to go break our defense and shouting at or attempting to convert us," he said.

He recounted in detail how rioters beat him while he was trapped in a doorway.

"Directly in front of me, a man seized the opportunity of my vulnerability, grabbed the front of my gas mask and used it to beat my head against the door," he said. "He never uttered any words but opted instead for guttural screams. I remember him foaming at the mouth."

In powerful testimony, Metropolitan Police Department officer Michael Fanone, who was dragged down the Capitol steps, beaten with a flagpole and tased repeatedly on Jan. 6, recalled how rioters chanted, "kill him with his own gun" as he was being beaten and lying on the ground.

"I said as loud as I could manage ‘I've got kids,'" he testified.

Fanone didn’t hold back when calling out lawmakers who have blocked efforts for an investigation, slamming his fist on the witness table when he said, "The indifference shown to my colleagues is disgraceful."

"I feel like I went to hell and back to protect them and the people in this room, but too many are now telling me that hell doesn't exist or that hell actually wasn't that bad," he said.

"Nothing, truly nothing, has prepared me to address those elected members of our government who continue to deny the events of that day, and in doing so betray their oath of office," he added.