A D.C. Metropolitan Police officer who was brutally beaten in the Capitol riot criticized elected officials who “whitewash the events of that day.”

In an emotional interview with CNN, Officer Michael Fanone did not mention former President Donald Trump by name but referred to comments Trump made last month to Fox News when the former president said his supporters were “hugging and kissing” police on Jan. 6.

That description was “very different from what I experienced and what my coworkers experienced on the 6th,” Fanone said.

Other prominent Republicans, including Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, have also sought to push false narratives that the events of Jan. 6 were largely non-violent or perpetuated by antifa activists trying to make Trump look bad. A Reuters/Ipsos poll earlier this month found that about half Republicans believe those false claims. 

Fanone has previously described being tased several times in the neck, being beaten with a flagpole and hearing rioters screaming they should “kill him with his own gun.” He suffered a heart attack from the stun gun and says he is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I think probably for about the first two weeks after the 6th, I was still riding pretty high on adrenaline,” Fanone told CNN. “Shortly thereafter, I started to experience some of the, I guess, more psychological injuries — PTSD, some of the emotional trauma from what I experienced that day.

“I experienced the most brutal, savage hand-to-hand combat of my entire life, let alone my policing career, which spans almost two decades. It was nothing that I had ever thought would be a part of my law enforcement career, nor was I prepared to experience.”

Fanone said he thought on Jan. 6 that it was “a distinct possibility” he would die. 

“They just started attacking me from all directions,” he described. “Guys were (trying to) rip my badge off, rip my radio off, started grabbing my firearm, trying to grab ammunition magazines from my belt. It was overwhelming. I felt like they were trying to kill me.”

He said he considered using deadly force but then remembered he was vastly outnumbered.

“The likelihood of me surviving by using deadly force is not good,” Fanone said. “ … It would have provided individuals that were there with the justification that I think they were looking for.”

The veteran cop said he’s generally an apolitical person — “I look at politics the same way I look at the Olympics, I like my politics every four years” — but he clearly blamed Trump for inciting the crowd.

“With the previous administration, there was a lot of pandering towards law enforcement. And I was susceptible to that, I think, like many of my colleagues were, but I was,” he said. “And to have a group of individuals or someone who had espoused to be a law-and-order official or a law-and-order president and then experience what I experienced on the 6th, which I believe resulted from the rhetoric that was being used in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, I mean, that was difficult to come to terms with.”

More than 140 police officers were injured in the Capitol attack, carried about a mob of Trump supporters seeking to disrupt Congress’ certification of Joe Biden’s election win. One Capitol Police officer, Brian Sicknick, died the following day, although D.C.’s chief medical examiner determined the 42-year-old suffered two strokes and died of natural causes.

More than 400 suspects have been charged in the riot, including several who are accused of attacking Fanone.