Two men from California have now become a couple of the latest Trump supporters to be arrested by federal authorities for participating in the Capitol riot in January. Those who were arrested include 34-year-old David Nicholas Dempsey and 54-year-old Jeffrey Scott Brown, and both were charged with assaulting police officers, among other offenses. Dempsey’s charges include obstruction of an official proceeding — which can carry a 20-year prison sentence, if convicted.
At the Capitol, Dempsey can be seen in video footage in the vicinity of gallows that were put up outside the building. At the time, Dempsey said that Trump’s opponents “need to hang from these,” adding that “hopefully one day soon we really have someone hanging from one of these.” At least part of the crowd at the Capitol that day hoped to bring then-Vice President Mike Pence to the gallows over his perceived disloyalty to Donald Trump. Specifically, Trump wanted Pence to take the illegal move of intervening to stop the certification by Congress of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory. Pence refused — he possessed no such power to stop the certification of election results, despite Trump’s claims — and at the Capitol, chants of “Hang Mike Pence!” eventually rang out.
At the Capitol, both Dempsey and Brown deployed chemical agents against law enforcement. Surveillance footage shows Dempsey “spraying [officers] with what appears to be a lacrimal agent,” according to the criminal complaint against him, and according to that same filing, photos also show Dempsey “using various objects, including a crutch and a metal pole, as bludgeoning weapons or projectiles against the line of law enforcement officers protecting the Capitol building.” Dempsey was actually already sentenced to two years in California state prison for perpetrating political violence in a different context — he used bear spray on anti-Trump protesters in Los Angeles in 2019 — but it’s not immediately clear what the status of that sentence is. He was taken into custody for the Capitol riot charges at his home.
Meanwhile, Brown can be seen in a video “in a mob of rioters who rip a gas mask off a police officer’s face,” according to NBC. He posted a $100,000 bond and has been released from custody ahead of his trial, while Dempsey remains behind bars and has a detention hearing scheduled for this Tuesday. Read more at this link.
