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The first man to be tried on charges of assaulting a police officer in a pro-Trump mob attack on the U.S. Capitol was convicted on all counts Monday after a federal jury debated about three hours and found a retired New York City Police Officer Thomas Webster. guilty of six charges.
Webster, 56, of Goshen, New York, attacked Columbia County police officer Noah Rathbone with an aluminum Marine flag, jurors said. A panel of eight women and four men also found Webster guilty of police interference in rioting and disorderly conduct and violent behavior while carrying a deadly or dangerous weapon on the Capitol.
Webster, who previously served as a security guard for former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, was the first of about 150 defendants accused of assaulting a police officer who took his case to a jury and the first to challenge self-defense.
Federal juries in Washington have already found the four defendants on trial for serious crimes guilty after riots began after President Donald Trump called on supporters to go to the Capitol, where Congress confirmed Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. d.
U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta handed down the sentence in September.
Two officers fight in the Capitol riot on January 6. Who made a mistake?
In a video shown during last week’s four-day trial, Webster stepped out of the crowd, uttered obscene words and slammed his finger into a police line before pushing a metal barrier for a rack of bicycles in Rathban. As the DC officer pushed him hard back with an open palm to his face, Webster swung an aluminum flagpole several times down to the bike rack and knocked the officer to the ground as the crowd lunged forward.
Webster, who said he was outraged by police use tear gas and plastic shells against protesters, accused Rathban of not escalating the situation. Webster said the younger District of Columbia police officer started the fight by luring him with a hand gesture out of sight of the camera before hitting him in the face. Webster said the impact felt “like a freight train” and made him fight back for fear of safety.
“I saw him start dividing the shelves to come after me,” Webster testified in his own defense. “I’m afraid. I thought he was some kind of fraudulent cop and I was worried about my safety.
Prosecutors and witnesses, including police and FBI agents, dismissed this feature of Webster, who served as a Marine infantryman from 1985 to 1989, saying he was the aggressor and denying any wrongdoing by Rathban.
“This case is about a former officer who forcibly attacked another officer on the line in front of the Capitol on January 6 … with Congress on his back and nothing but a bicycle rack that protects him from thousands of angry rebels in front of him,” said the US assistant. Lawyer Hava Mirel told the jury in an introductory statement.
“All our teams were ineffective. No one was listening, “said Joanna Burger, a police officer at the US Capitol near Rutban. “They didn’t care if they had to hurt us to get to the legislators.
She said police faced hostile crowds on all sides and showered from thrown metal pipes, wood, glass and plastic bottles.
“The threat,” Burger said, “was all around us at the time.”
Webster, a married father of three who has been working on landscaping since retiring in 2011, admitted to driving alone to Washington on the night of Jan. 4, eating military rations in his hotel room and then listening to Trump’s speech at Ellipse. on January 6, before joining protesters in the Capitol. There he rushed to the besieged police line and chose an officer with a gas mask and helmet as a man who “could handle” if Webster was upset.
In the footage from Ratban Webster’s body camera, he walks out of the crowd with a series of obscene words at Ratban, calls police “commissioners,” shouts, “Are you going to attack Americans?” And challenges Ratban to “take his [gear] off ”and fight. At that moment, he pushed the bike rack toward the police line.
With his open left hand, Rathban then handcuffs Webster’s face, knocking him down. The videos do not show whether Rathban gestured to Webster in advance, according to a retired New York City police officer.
FBI and DC police investigators said the DC officer was trying to “free up space” and protect the security perimeter as members of the crowd stormed in from both sides at 2:28 p.m. on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace. about the midpoint of half an hour when the west and east sides of the building were first breached.
“He grabbed the bike rack and pushed it into me,” Ratban said. “It was very worrying for me because he was dealing with aggressive behavior, physically violent behavior. I was worried that part of the barrier would be compromised and pushed out and everyone would be able to move forward.
In the ensuing battle, Webster, in a red-white-black jacket, used his hands to grab a gas mask around Rathban’s face, an action taken in a photo that Twitter spies mistakenly tagged #EyeGouger.
In Webster’s defense, attorney James E. Monroe accused Ratban of using improper force, claiming that he incited and mocked the elderly man out of sight of the camera. He suggested that Rathban had a guilty conscience because he did not immediately disclose the incident to his FBI chief or investigator, did not complete a report on the use of force, or did not mention it in a private text to his brother.
“This is a dishonest, unprofessional police officer who set out to punish my client for expressing himself in a way he found undesirable,” Monroe said in his closing remarks, referring jurors to police officers on both sides of Rathban who were holding hands. you are. the barriers in front of them.
Webster said he was upset and struggling with fear and “just pure disappointment.”
“Don’t hurt the child, but just let him know he won’t hit me again,” Webster said.
U.S. Attorney Catherine Nilsson directed the jurors to videotape, saying Webster had invited Ratban to fight and who the aggressor was, and that Ratban had not been tried. “Everything we see from an officer for 20 years is not a de-escalation on his part, but an escalation at every possible turn,” Nielsen said.
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