- A former New York cop is accused of assaulting a police officer at the Capitol on January 6.
- Prosecutors say Thomas Webster used a metal flag pole — with the Marine Corps flag — as a weapon.
- After confronting police, he tackled an officer and earned the nickname #EyeGouger online.
In the immediate aftermath of January 6, 2021, as the FBI and an army of online sleuths tracked down suspected participants in the Capitol attack, an image circulated of a rioter appearing to gouge the eyes of a downed police officer.
With plenty of pictures but no identity, the voices of social media settled on a nickname for the man: #EyeGouger. But within weeks, the FBI identified the alleged attacker as none other than a Marine veteran and retired New York City police officer, Thomas Webster.
Webster is now set to become the fourth accused participant in the Capitol attack to stand trial before a jury on charges related to January 6.
The trial, which begins Monday with jury selection, is the second involving a former police officer as the defendant. And it will feature a defense not yet seen in a January 6 jury trial: That Webster was acting in self-defense when he attacked a Metro police officer.
Webster faces six charges, including assaulting a police officer, trespassing on restricted Capitol grounds, and disorderly conduct. If convicted, he faces a potential years-long sentence.
In an FBI interview the day he was arrested, Webster claimed he was attacked first while standing behind a metal barrier erected outside the Capitol. "I got hit like a freight train," he told an FBI agent on February 22, 2021.
"Like a big sucker punch, and I didn't think, I felt like I was being attacked, and I went towards the officer," he added.
Drawing from police bodycam footage and other evidence, federal prosecutors have painted a different picture of Webster's conduct on January 6.
Webster carried a metal flag pole — bearing the flag of the US Marine Corps — and confronted a police officer at a barrier, according to court papers. Waving his finger at an officer, he yelled: "You fucking piece of shit. You fucking Commie motherfuckers, man . . . Come on, take your shit off. Take your shit off."
After berating the officer, prosecutors said, Webster aggressively shoved the metal gate into the police officer's body and brandished the flag pole, swinging it downward against the barrier. Webster later struck the officer with the pole multiple times and tackled him to the ground, where he tried to forcibly remove his face shield and gas mask, prosecutors said.
Later, in an interview with the FBI, the Metro police officer said he was unable to breathe during the assault because Webster was choking him with his helmet's chin strap. In his own interview with the FBI, Webster characterized his grabbing of the officer's mask as a "a hockey type of move type thing where you don't want to fight somebody."
"I just didn't wanna hurt him that's what I kept on saying to myself," Webster told the FBI, according to an interview transcript.
In the upcoming trial, the officer is expected to take the stand as the Justice Department's star witness.
Webster is likely to also take the stand to testify about his perception of the events of January 6, namely his encounter with the police officer. At a pretrial conference, the federal judge presiding over the prosecution said that jurors would need to assess Webster's perception of the events and the "reasonableness of that perception."
Judge Amit Mehta, an Obama appointee who is also presiding over the prosecution of several Oath Keepers charged in connection with January 6, said he expects jury selection to take up much of Monday. Opening arguments will follow on Tuesday, he said.
At the pretrial hearing, Webster's defense lawyer said he planned to call three witnesses to testify to the "outstanding character [Webster] possesses." The lawyer, James Monroe, insisted that the court ask potential jurors about any ties they have to the military, noting that the Metro police officer and Webster both served in the military.
Webster is among nearly 800 alleged participants in the Capitol attack who've faced charges linked to January 6. The Justice Department secured guilty verdicts in each of the three previous jury trials, winning convictions against a member of the far-right Three Percenters group, a former police officer in Virginia, and an Ohio man who blamed former President Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 attack.
In two bench trials — in which a judge rendered a verdict instead of a jury — a Trump-appointed federal judge dealt the Justice Department setbacks. In one case, Judge Trevor McFadden found a New Mexico county commissioner guilty of trespassing on restricted Capitol grounds but acquitted him on a separate misdemeanor charge. A subsequent bench trial ended with McFadden issuing the first outright acquittal in a January 6 case, finding a New Mexico engineer not guilty on four misdemeanor charges.
Webster is among nearly 800 alleged participants in the Capitol attack who've faced charges linked to January 6. The Justice Department secured guilty verdicts in each of the three previous jury trials, winning convictions against a member of the far-right Three Percenters group, a former police officer in Virginia, and an Ohio man who blamed former President Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 attack.
In two bench trials — in which a judge rendered a verdict instead of a jury — a Trump-appointed federal judge dealt the Justice Department setbacks. In one case, Judge Trevor McFadden found a New Mexico county commissioner guilty of trespassing on restricted Capitol grounds but acquitted him on a separate misdemeanor charge. A subsequent bench trial ended with McFadden issuing the first outright acquittal in a January 6 case, finding a New Mexico engineer not guilty on four misdemeanor charges.
In the second jury trial, prosecutors alleged that Thomas Robertson, a former police officer in Rocky Mount, Virginia, used a wooden stick to block officers responding to the Capitol breach on January 6. Jurors rejected his defense lawyer's argument that Robertson used the stick — which he identified as a flagpole during an FBI search of his car — as a walking stick.
Robertson and Webster were among several former police officers charged in connection with January 6. In interviews, Capitol police officers have described their surprise at that subset of rioters and recalled how off-duty police officers said they were "doing this for you."
"One of them showed me his badge — 'We're doing this for you. Trust me buddy, we're doing this for you," Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn recalled in an interview last year. "My initial reaction was, 'You've got to be kidding me.'"