A Massachusetts man who hit a police officer during the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, and later wrote about it on social media, pleaded guilty Monday to assaulting a law enforcment officer.
In a federal court in Washington, D.C., Troy Sargent, of Pittsfield, entered a guilty plea for all of the six charges he faced, including assaulting, resisting or impeding officers and civil disorder.
According to U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves, Sargent was among the crowd of supporters of former President Donald Trump who rioted on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 in an effort to disrupt the joint session of Congress meeting to certify President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
Around 2:30 p.m., as rioters spilled into the Capitol, the 38-year-old Sargent stepped forward from a crowd outside the building and hit a Capitol Police officer. He was met with a warning to “not start attacking people” by another officer, said Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.
Sargent swung at the same officer 30 seconds later, but made contact with another person in the crowd, officials said.
In a social media message later, Sargent wrote to another person: “I got two hits in on the same rookie cop,” according to Graves.
Police arrested Sargent in Pittsfield two months after the Capitol insurrection.
The FBI said after his arrest that they relied on several tips that included images and posts from Facebook and body camera footage from police.
According to court documents, the FBI received two tips on Jan. 11 that Sargent participated in the insurrection at the Capitol. Each submission included a photograph that has since been removed from social media of Sargent in front of Capitol police in riot gear.
Over the next eight days, authorities said, the FBI received three more tips, all of which included social media posts from Sargent that linked him to the violence at the Capitol or to being in Washington, D.C. at the time of the insurrection, which left multiple people dead.
Additional videos reviewed by the FBI showed a man in a dark sweatshirt and red-brimmed cap taking a selfie in front of police in riot gear. The FBI identified the person as Sargent through appearance and through his voice, authorities said.
The videos, according to court documents, showed Sargent raising his right hand to throw a punch at a police officer and inadvertently striking a member of the crowd.
Ahead of the riot, federal investigators said Sargent also bragged about going to attend a planned protest in Washington, D.C. to resist the results of the presidential election.
Sargent later captioned one photo taken during the riot as “I’m not missing this sh-t.”
The Pittsfield man will return to court for sentencing on Oct. 3. He could face up to eight years in prison, though several other Jan. 6 rioters who faced similar charges have instead been sentenced to between three and five years in prison, according to Time Magazine.
In the year-and-a-half since Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 people from nearly every state have been arrested for their actions at the Capitol. More than 250 of them have been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement.
A select committee in the House of Representatives is also investigating the causes behind the insurrection. In public hearings, the House committee has painted a picture of a Trump becoming increasingly “detached from reality” — in the words of his former Attorney General William Barr — over his loss to Biden.
The committee is next scheduled to hold on Tuesday — which was scheduled abruptly, according to the New York Times — to discuss evidence it recently obtained.
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