A participant in last year’s Trump-incited mob assault on the Capitol has been arrested in Utah on felony and misdemeanor charges after investigators determined he attacked police outside the Capitol, including by charging at them.
That’s the language authorities used. There’s no apparent indication the rioter, 48-year-old Justin Dee Adams, went inside the Capitol, but outside the building, some of his initial interactions with police began with him walking towards cops with his arms raised. After he apparently at least partly walked into one of the officers, police forced him back, at which point he rushed at officers, fighting what seems like several. “After police officers pushed ADAMS back again, he continued to yell and gesture at police officers aggressively, while other rioters attempted to hold him back,” a statement of facts filed in the Adams case says. Adams subsequently helped another rioter remove a metal bicycle rack in use as a makeshift physical barricade meant for holding back portions of the crowd. Police tried to stop the removal of the bike rack, and Adams threw a plastic bottle at one of them.
According to the court filing, Adams was identified by a confidential human source for the FBI, and his identity was also later confirmed by someone who has known the defendant for some five years and was shown images. Adams’s participation in the Capitol rampage was partly captured on police body cam footage. The source initially providing details to the agency about Adams did so after the agency released an image of the defendant among rioters for whom investigators still sought info. The source’s revelations, which also pointed investigators to an account on the right-wing social media site Parler associated with a weapons store Adams apparently owned, were provided to the FBI in early November of last year. Adams posted on the Parler account both before and after going to D.C., chronicling parts of his trip. Adams appears in photos on the website for his gun store, and the statement of facts pointed out as much. The images allowed investigators to make yet another connecting thread between Adams and what happened in D.C.
The acquaintance of Adams who provided the FBI with further confirmation of his identity sounds like a neighbor. “Additionally, a witness who lives in Utah in the same general area as ADAMS and has known ADAMS for approximately five years was shown several photographs of ADAMS, including BOLO AFO-374 and screen shots from the MPD BWC footage,” the court document said. “This witness positively identified ADAMS as the individual in the photographs.” Adams’s charges include assault on police and interfering with law enforcement during a civil disorder, both of which are felonies. In other riot-related news, federal prosecutors say Capitol mob participant Albuquerque Head, who participated in the assault on then-D.C. officer Michael Fanone, should receive eight years in prison at his sentencing October 27. That’s the maximum under the charge to which he pleaded guilty.
