San Diego Union-Tribune

EX-NYPD OFFICER GUILTY OF ASSAULT IN RIOT

Webster claimed he acted in self-defense in attack on D.C. cop

- BY ALAN FEUER Feuer writes for The New York Times.

A former New York City police officer who claimed he was acting in self-defense when he swung a metal flagpole at a fellow officer during the attack on the Capitol in January last year was convicted Monday of all charges, including assault.

The former officer, Thomas Webster, was the first person charged in connection with the riot to defend himself at trial by claiming that the officers protecting the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, had used excessive force against the proTrump mob that stormed the building.

The guilty verdict in the case — returned within two hours on the first full day of deliberati­ons — could give pause to other defendants planning to use similar arguments at their own trials.

Webster, a former Marine who once served on the protective detail of Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, testified that he had gone to Washington to hear President Donald Trump speak near the White House and became upset as he walked toward the Capitol and saw people injured by the violence that had erupted.

As he approached the

barricades that surrounded the building, he told the jury, a Metropolit­an Police Department officer, Noah Rathbun, provoked him with a brief wave then threw a punch at him that struck him like a “freight train.”

But videos played by the prosecutio­n cast doubt on this account, showing Webster emerging from the crowd and berating officers at the barricades in a state of foul-mouthed rage.

Webster could be seen in the videos repeatedly pushing at the barricades, then swinging a flagpole at Rathbun before he shoved through the police line and tackled the officer.

Webster’s weeklong trial in U.S. District Court in Washington touched on one of the striking elements of

Jan. 6: that even though many people in the crowd that day vocally supported the police, scores were ultimately charged with assaulting officers and more than 140 were injured.

During his time on the witness stand last week, Webster described the dizzying experience of attacking a fellow member of law enforcemen­t.

“It was almost like a role reversal,” he told the jury at one point. “I felt like I was the cop and he was the protester.”

The jury also found Webster guilty of interferin­g with law enforcemen­t during a civil disorder, and entering and remaining in a restricted area with a deadly or dangerous weapon.

Moments after the verdict was handed down, another former Marine, Kevin Creek, who pleaded guilty in December to assaulting another officer during the riot, was sentenced in a nearby courtroom to 27 months in prison.

With its victory in the Webster trial, the Justice Department has now won all four of its jury trials connected to the Capitol attack.

In March, a jury in federal court in Washington convicted Guy Wesley Reffitt, a member of a Texas militia, of leading a section of the mob in an advance on the police outside the Capitol and disrupting Congress’ certificat­ion of the 2020 presidenti­al election.

Last month, a jury found Dustin Thompson, an Ohio exterminat­or, guilty of obstructin­g Congress and stealing government property despite his claims that he had been acting on Trump’s orders.

A few days before that, a former Virginia police officer, Thomas Robertson, was convicted by a jury on six counts, including the obstructio­n of the official electoral count by Congress.

One defendant, Matthew Martin, a former defense contractor from New Mexico, was acquitted at a bench trial in early April after the judge agreed with his claims that the police had let him into the Capitol.

 ?? METROPOLIT­AN POLICE DEPARTMENT VIA AP ?? An image from police body-worn camera video shows Thomas Webster outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Webster was found guilty of assaulting a D.C. police officer with a metal flagpole during the riot.
METROPOLIT­AN POLICE DEPARTMENT VIA AP An image from police body-worn camera video shows Thomas Webster outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Webster was found guilty of assaulting a D.C. police officer with a metal flagpole during the riot.

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