A North Carolina man who stormed the U.S. Capitol while free on bail for an attempted murder case pleaded guilty Thursday to attacking police officers with a pole attached to an American flag during the mob's riot.
Matthew Jason Beddingfield, 22, appeared to flash a Nazi salute toward the Capitol after attacking officers trying to protect the building from rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, according to federal prosecutors.
Beddingfield was one of the first rioters to jump over barricades and confront law enforcement at the Capitol’s West Plaza, where he attacked officers with his flagpole and threw a metal rod at police, prosecutors said.
“There is a connection in Beddingfield’s white supremacist views and the physical manifestations thereof and his violent acts,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean Murphy wrote in a court filing last year.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols is scheduled to sentence Beddingfield on June 22. He pleaded guilty to one felony count of assaulting, resisting or impeding officers, according to the U.S. Attorney's office for the District of Columbia.
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