Five Florida men who are members of a militia group were arrested Wednesday in locations around the country for their participation in last year’s Trump-incited Capitol riot.
Four are facing a felony charge of interfering with a law enforcement officer during a civil disorder after they engaged in part of the lengthy struggle between rioters and police in the Lower West Terrace tunnel at the Capitol. The perceptibly claustrophobia-inducing area was a site of particularly violent confrontation, where riot participants used stolen riot shields alongside implements like a flashing strobe light (meant for disorientation) and what evidence suggests was a lit firecracker against officers. It’s near the tunnel where then-D.C. officer Michael Fanone was viciously assaulted by the mob, and it’s amid the struggle in the tunnel that officer Daniel Hodges, who is with the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, was pinned down and screamed out in pain in a moment captured on infamous video footage.
The four newly arrested rioters facing that felony charge are Benjamin Cole, John Edward Crowley, Brian Preller, and Jonathan Rockholt. The fifth newly arrested rioter who is a member of the same militia group, Tyler Bensch, was “just outside” the tunnel as violence took place inside, a Justice Department filing indicates. These five individuals are evidently members of a group tied to the Three Percenters, which is the same violent group with which Texas man Guy Reffitt was affiliated. (Reffitt received one of the longest sentences imposed so far on any riot participant.) The five Florida men arrested Wednesday were part of the so-called “B Squad,” which the Justice Department described as part of a larger, militia-style group based in Florida called the “Guardians of Freedom.” The parent group “adheres to the ideology of the “Three Percenters,”” the department said.
The newly arrested rioters evidently prepared for violence. Among them, the five men carried tactical gear, chemical sprays, and what evidence suggests was a knife. They arrived in D.C. before January 6, staying at a hotel the night prior to the violence. The four who participated in violence inside the Lower West Terrace tunnel specifically participated in a so-called heave-ho motion involving rioters using the collective force of their bodies to push against police. Mob members moved in a synchronized, back-and-forth motion. They broke through an initially formed police line in the tunnel, although confrontations continued. Although the Justice Department doesn’t specify that Bensch participated in the heave-ho maneuvers inside the tunnel, he — for some reason — sprayed a fellow member of the crowd in the face with chemical spray he was holding, the Justice Department notes.
The felony charge against the other four members of the group seemingly comes with up to five years in prison. All five are charged with entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds alongside disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, which are misdemeanor offenses. Bensch, notably, is the youngest of the five, at 20 years old. Preller was arrested the farthest from Florida: he was picked up in Vermont. Meanwhile federal prosecutors are seeking 17 and a half years in prison for convicted rioter Thomas Webster, a former NYC police officer who violently fought with D.C. officer Noah Rathbun during the Capitol violence. Webster tackled Rathbun to the ground, among other acts.
