CCSF Alumnus attended Capitol Riot
By Garrett Leahy
Among the crowd of Trump supporters who violently stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 was City College alumnus and San Francisco resident Daniel Goodwyn, who attended in 2014 to attain a certificate in mobile app development.
The attack resulted in five deaths, including one Capitol police officer, as several hundred supporters of then-President Donald Trump sought to prevent the electoral college ballot count confirming the presidential election’s outcome, normally a routine formality. Capitol police officer Brian Sicknik died Jan. 7 after being hospitalized for injuries incurred by protesters, who hit him in the head with a fire extinguisher and beat him. Protester and Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed by Capitol police after attempting to clamber in through a window leading into the Speaker’s Lobby, which had been smashed by protesters. The other three protesters — Kevin Greeson, Roseanne Boyland, and Benjamin Phillips — died from medical emergencies on Jan. 6.
Goodwyn, a web designer and brand ambassador for right-wing group Stophate.org, which has hosted “free speech” rallies in San Francisco and Washington D.C., was sued by the FBI on Jan. 15 for violent entry and trespassing during the Capitol riot after his “associate” reported him.
Goodwyn made incriminating posts to his Instagram account during the riot, including live-streaming himself entering the building and posting, “I didn’t break or take anything but I went inside for a couple of minutes” shortly after being removed by police, according to the FBI complaint.
While Goodwyn is not being charged with assault or vandalism, several rioters smashed windows, vandalized congressional offices, and attacked Capitol police with metal pipes. The FBI also said on Jan. 29 that the two pipe bombs discovered outside the DNC and RNC headquarters on Jan. 6 were in fact placed the night before.
The Capitol riot was the culmination of Trump’s refusal to accept losing the election, fomenting distrust in the electoral process among his supporters. Trump’s attempts to overturn the election results failed, however, and Biden was inaugurated on Jan. 20, issuing a salvo of executive orders aimed at dismantling core tenets of Trump’s presidential legacy, including rejoining the Paris Climate Accord, ending Trump’s travel ban from several majority-Muslim countries, and most recently, directing agencies to re-examine healthcare policies which reduce protections for those with preexisting conditions.