Tennessee resident Ronald McAbee has now become one of the latest Trump supporters to face federal criminal charges for participating in the Capitol riot. At the time of the riot, McAbee himself was employed as a deputy sheriff with the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office, and during the deadly violence, he wore a black tactical vest that said “Sheriff” on it. Disturbingly, McAbee helped perpetrate a vicious assault against law enforcement officers at the Capitol that day, and concurrently, his new charges include assaulting an officer. McAbee and a fellow rioter dragged one officer down Capitol steps, and when another officer stepped in to try and help the initial victim, McAbee repeatedly punched the other officer. McAbee was wearing metal-knuckled gloves at the time.
Following the violence, the officer who McAbee helped drag into the raging mob “was hospitalized and received staples in his head to stop his bleeding,” according to CNN. Stunningly, McAbee eventually went up to the police line at the Capitol and attempted to use his sheriff vest to convince officers to let him inside the premises. He was hoping to obtain medical attention for an injury that he suspected to be a broken shoulder, apparently.
McAbee went to D.C. while on two weeks of medical leave that he requested after getting in a car accident in late December of last year. McAbee apparently left his post with the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office in March, but a spokesperson for the department declined to tell CNN whether his exit was connected to what happened at the Capitol. (He’d only been employed there since November of last year.) In the meantime, McAbee was in pre-trial detention as of this weekend, and prosecutors are seeking to have him left in jail until his trial.
As prosecutors put it, referencing McAbee’s attempt to use his sheriff vest as an excuse to be let inside the Capitol, the “fact that McAbee engaged in violent assaults of fellow law enforcement officers while he himself was a sheriff’s deputy and then attempted to use that status to obtain special treatment is powerful evidence of his lack of regard for legal authority.” A federal judge is slated to decide next week on whether to keep McAbee in custody ahead of his trial. So far, those who perpetrated physical violence at the Capitol have been among those more likely to be jailed ahead of their respective trials.
