WASHINGTON — A Jan. 6 attendee whose fearsome blonde locks and facial tattoos made him a memorable sight in the pro-Trump crowd has been arrested in South Dakota, the FBI said, accusing him of pushing an officer during the Capitol fight after ‘ramming’. a giant metal-framed “TRUMP” sign in a line of police officers.
William George Knight is facing more than a half-dozen charges in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, including misdemeanor charges of assault on a federal officer and obstruction of law enforcement during civil unrest.
Footage collected by “riot hunters” who have assisted the FBI in hundreds of cases against Capitol rioters shows that the man, identified as Knight, was among the first people to breach the initial barriers at the Capitol and shows that he tore away police barricades as the crowd confronted them. officers. Video shows the same man aggressively confronting law enforcement, at one point rushing toward the police line with an extended flagpole and then slamming it onto the concrete in front of officers. That man was initially dubbed the “Dreaded Proud Boy” by online sleuths because of his hairstyle and proximity to members of the far-right organization during the initial breach of the Capitol grounds, but federal prosecutors have not presented any evidence to link Knight to the organization. .
Footage from before the attack on the Capitol also shows the man, identified as Knight, banging on glass near the Washington Monument after officers took another man into custody near the Trump rally on the Ellipse, where the election-denying former president told the crowd to “fight like hell.” ‘Otherwise they wouldn’t have any land left.
The Jan. 6 FBI affidavit in Knight’s case says he has “several distinctive tattoos, including one under his left eye… and what appears to be the Cadillac car company emblem on his neck.”
‘We’re not leaving! We’re not going anywhere!’ According to the FBI, Knight yelled at officers. “Here are the b—-es. Here are the b—-es.”
According to the FBI, Knight also helped use a giant metal frame that read “TRUMP” as a ram into a line of police officers and then pushed an officer.
The intentions of the January 6 participants who touched that sign are difficult for the courts to determine. Some rioters have been convicted in connection with their use of the giant sign, but one rioter was acquitted on a charge related to their handling of the “TRUMP” sign, with a judge finding the evidence “ambiguous” even though the suspect was convicted of assaulting officers at multiple other points during the attack.
Federal prosecutors have charged more than 1,425 rioters and secured more than 1,019 convictions against the Jan. 6 defendants in the more than three years since the attack on the Capitol. More than 540 rioters have received prison sentences ranging from a few days behind bars to 22 years in prison for former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy along with three others in the organization.
On Friday, a Trump-appointed federal judge, whose dismissal over obstruction of justice charges against Jan. 6 rioters is pending at the Supreme Court, convicted a man known as “Sedition Panda” of all Capitol charges he faced. Later in the day on Friday, former Boston K-9 officer Joseph Fisher – who attacked a Capitol Police officer with a chair – called his own behavior on January 6 “egregious” before being sentenced to 20 months in prison. Christopher Quaglin, a violent Jan. 6 rioter who was sentenced Friday to 12 years in prison, said at his sentencing hearing that Trump would be back in power in eight short months and offered his services to a future Trump administration before he would offend Trump. -appointed judge who convicted him.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
