A Capitol riot defendant has been convicted of a series of felony offenses at a bench trial, meaning a trial where the outcome was determined by a judge rather than a jury, after authorities said he wore body armor and carried a tactical tomahawk axe while in Washington, D.C.
The defendant is a Texas man named Alex Harkrider, who was also among the Capitol rioters accused of actually entering the Capitol building that day. The felonies of which Harkrider was convicted include civil disorder, obstruction of an official proceeding, and both a trespassing and disorderly conduct offense that it was specified were allegedly committed with a deadly or dangerous weapon in tow, which increases the offenses’ severity.
A press release on Harkrider’s case doesn’t say he brought actual firearms to the Capitol building, but it does assert he and a friend and co-defendant, Ryan Nichols, both brought firearms with them in their trip to the nation’s capital.
And like other rioters who’ve faced some of the most serious charges and eventual sentences, they both showed up at the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace tunnel. It’s there that some of the most significant violence was seen, like the filmed moment when local Officer Daniel Hodges was pinned by the weight of the crowd and screamed in pain. The two (meaning Harkrider and Nichols) allegedly joined in some of that crowd’s so-called heave-ho movements, meaning they rocked back and forth in hopes of using the combined force of their presence to overcome police.
Nichols and Harkrider used a broken window for entering the Capitol, authorities also stated. Harkrider took home a broken piece of furniture from the Capitol. Nichols has gained additional attention beyond the substance of his original charges with claims about his experiences in D.C. jail. In one document eventually filed in court, for instance, he accused jail authorities of “streaming anti-white messages and critical race theory propaganda across his tablet.”
