Don't forget Michael Lopatic this Memorial Day — a Beirut Marine I knew in the DC Jail.

This Memorial Day, I want to tell you about a man most of the country never heard of — and the few who did only got the worst version of him: Michael Lopatic.

I knew him. We were locked up together in Washington, D.C. after January 6. So before you take the government's word for who he was, hear it from someone who shared a jail with him.

Michael was a United States Marine — a mortarman who served in Beirut, Lebanon. He came home having lost the hearing in both ears, carrying the kind of PTSD that never really lets a man go. Back home in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, he was a devout Catholic: taught Sunday school, sat in a marriage-strengthening group at his parish. The people at St. Mary's called him gentle and kind. That is not the picture the country was handed.

The picture the country was handed was a federal charge — that on January 6 he punched a police officer and tore the body camera off another. I won't lie to you: the charge is real, and it's serious. But here's what almost no one will tell you — Michael never got a trial. He never stood in front of a jury and said his piece. He died first: July 3, 2022, at 58 years old, at Lancaster General Hospital, after a long stretch of failing health.

What he always said — what he was proud of — is that he believed he was protecting people that day, putting himself between men and women and what he saw as a brutal beating by MPD and Capitol Police. You can believe the government's account or you can believe his. All I'll say is a man ought to get to make his case before he's buried under someone else's. Michael never got the chance.

What I can give you is the man I knew on that cell block: no BS, loved this country, loved the Corps — proud of his service and unashamed of who he was, to the end. Whatever you decide about that day, this was a Marine who gave his hearing for the United States in Beirut and died waiting on a trial that never came.

So today, of all days — don't forget Michael Lopatic. A husband. A father. A Sunday school teacher. A mortarman. A great United States Marine.

I'm not the only one keeping his name alive today:

If you read this far, do one thing: say his name to someone today. That's how we make sure they don't get to erase him.

Rest easy, Devil Dog. Semper Fi.