Former D.C. Metropolitan police officer Michael Fanone strongly criticized President Donald Trump’s sweeping pardon for over 1,500 January 6 defendants, saying on Monday he feels “betrayed by my country.”

Fanone, 44, says he was brutally attacked by six people, one of whom was sentenced on Friday, while on duty at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and bemoans the fact they “will now walk free.” At the time of the assault, he suffered a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury. The ex-officer and his family also received threats from rioters, he recounts.

“The only thing going through my mind is that this is what the American people voted for,” Fanone told CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. “I have been betrayed by my country, and I have been betrayed by those who supported Donald Trump.”

“Whether you voted for him because he promised these pardons or for some other reason, you knew that this was coming. And here we are.”

Trump’s blanket pardon, signed via an executive order, includes roughly 900 defendants who were convicted on misdemeanor charges, as well as hundreds of others convicted of more serious offenses. Some 600 January 6 defendants were charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding police, including almost 200 rioters who carried weapons.

Many of those defendants pushed against police lines or used their bodies to interfere with law enforcement. Others faced charges related to destruction of government property or carrying firearms on Capitol grounds.

While he pardoned the vast majority of the January 6 defendants, Trump did commute the sentences of 14 individuals who he says require further investigation.

Among those receiving commutations include Stewart Rhodes, who led the right-wing militia Oath Keepers, and Dominic Pezzola, a Proud Boys member who was the first to break a window on the Senate side of the Capitol. Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy and other charges. Convicted of assaulting an officer, Pezzola was sentenced to ten years in prison.

Enrique Tarrio, a former leader of the Proud Boys, was one of the big-name defendants who received a pardon from Trump. He received the longest sentence of 22 years for seditious conspiracy.

Tarrio was released from federal prison in Louisiana late Monday. Freed from prison in Maryland, Rhodes stood outside the jail in Washington, D.C., Tuesday morning awaiting the release of more January 6 inmates. Pezzola’s release in North Carolina is expected on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the misdemeanor defendants were largely charged for having trespassed in the Capitol without committing any violence or destruction and most received sentences of probation or home confinement.

While Trump largely did not distinguish between violent and nonviolent defendants, Vice President J. D. Vance said last week that those responsible for the violence “obviously” should not be pardoned while those who “protested peacefully” should be pardoned. Vance has not spoken on the issue since the blanket pardon was signed.

Furthermore, Trump directed the U.S. attorney general to drop all pending indictments related to the Capitol riot four years ago.

Fanone was among the recipients of former president Joe Biden’s last-minute preemptive pardons for U.S. Capitol and D.C. Metropolitan police officers who testified before the now-defunct January 6 committee in 2021. Though he was pardoned, Fanone had not been charged with a crime.

“All I can say is that I think it’s a sad commentary on where we are as a nation that a sitting president thought it necessary to issue a preemptive pardon to a witness in a congressional investigation because the subject to that investigation is now the president and had promised to pursue politically motivated revenge,” Fanone said of his own pardon. “Again, it’s just more examples of the outrageous behavior of the current president of the United States.”

Five people died within 36 hours of the riot. Ashli Babbitt was fatally shot by a Capitol police officer outside the Speaker’s Lobby in the House, one died of a drug overdose, and three others passed away due to natural causes. The deaths of the latter four were initially reported to have been caused by assaults.