Retired NYPD officer Thomas Webster, charged with assaulting police, testified that D.C. riot unit officer Noah Rathbun started the fight.
In the fourth felony trial arising from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, Thomas Webster, 56, of Goshen, N.Y., faces seven counts including a charge of assaulting D.C. police Officer Noah Rathbun with a deadly weapon, an offense punishable by up to 20 years in prison. The earlier trials ended in convictions on all counts, but Webster is the first of about 150 defendants charged with assaulting an officer to take his case to a jury, and the first to argue self-defense.
Prosecutors and a string of police and FBI witnesses — several like Webster with U.S. military backgrounds — expressed bewilderment at that through-the-looking-glass argument.“This case is about a former officer who violently attacked another officer on the line outside the Capitol on Jan. 6 … with Congress at his back and nothing but a bike rack protecting him from thousands of angry rioters in front of him,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Hava Mirell told jurors in an opening statement.
charged with causing bodily harm or using weapons including bats, metal poles, fire extinguishers, chemical spray and Tasers. Prosecutors have signaled resistance to bargaining down police assault charges in plea deals. Webster, a married father of three who has done landscaping work since retiring in 2011, admitted driving alone to Washington overnight on Jan. 4, eating military rations in his hotel room, then listening to Trump’s speech at the Ellipse on Jan. 6 before joining protesters at the Capitol.
In the ensuing fight, the aluminum flagpole snapped before Rathbun pulled the remaining part away from Webster, who then grapples with Rathbun, who appears to fall. In a photograph widely shared on social media that Twitter sleuths erroneously tagged #EyeGouger, Webster in a red-white-and-black jacket uses his hands to grip the gas mask around Rathbun’s face.In Webster’s defense, attorney James E. Monroe blasted Rathbun for appearing to violate D.C.
“This officer incited me. He waved me over the fence. It’s wrong to do this. … It was shocking to see that,” Webster said. Once that happened, he said, “I felt like I needed to do something to try to protect myself,” and fought back out of fear and “just pure frustration.”
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