The Untold Story of the Insular Texas Family That Invaded the U.S. Capitol

From inside the home, several German shepherds snarled and barked at the sound of strangers arriving on the doorstep. The house, on a quiet street of low-slung brick residences just outside the Panhandle town of Borger, was otherwise quiet. Its garage door had been left open, revealing an array of carpentry tools hung against the back wall. Nothing unusual distinguished the place, except that the windows were lined with black plastic garbage bags and one of the panes bore a two-word message scrawled in red and blue paint. It said: “Trump Won.”

The dogs became even more animated after the doorbell rang. Half a minute passed, then the door opened. Standing there, with a hand still on the knob, was a wiry man in his fifties, with close-cropped hair and a thatch of gray stubble on his chin. “Hi! How are you?” Tom Munn said. His smile—somewhat asymmetrical, owing to the absence of several front teeth—was nervous but genial.

That members of the news media had shown up on his doorstep was perhaps surprising only because it had been several months since his family had done anything to warrant interest. This was January 8, 2022. The case of USA v. Munn et al., one of roughly nine hundred to result from the attack on the U.S. Capitol 367 days earlier, was moving slowly through the federal courts. Though it seemed likely that prosecutors would offer a plea deal by which the Munns could avoid lengthy jail time, nothing had yet materialized. “Everyone’s kind of in a wait-and-see pattern,” Munn said. “I don’t know how the system works, anyway. It’s completely foreign to me.”

A teenage girl emerged from behind his right shoulder, then smiled shyly and disappeared. “I was there that day too,” I said to Munn. “At the Capitol.” Munn offered an unsteady grin. A network of year-old impressions seemed to flicker across his gaze before he added, “It was—something!”

Read more: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/the-untold-story-of-the-insular-texas-family-that-invaded-the-u-s-capitol/


Kayli, Kassi (obscured because she was a minor), Kristi, Dawn, Tom, and Josh at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Justice