They came to the Capitol from across the United States, seemingly average citizens united in a moment of breathtaking brutality. How did they wind up there?
The American flag became a blunt instrument in the bearded man's hands. Wielding the flagpole like an axe, he swung once, twice, three times to beat a police officer being dragged down the steps of a US Capitol under siege.
Other officers also fell under mob attack, while the rest fought to keep the hordes from storming the Capitol and upending the routine transfer of power. Sprayed chemicals choked the air, projectiles flew overhead, and the unbridled roars formed a battle-cry din — all as a woman lay dying beneath the jostling scrum of the January 6 riot.
Amid the hand-to-hand combat, seven men from seven different states stood out. Although strangers to one another, they worked as if in concert while grappling with the phalanx of police officers barring entry to the Capitol.
The moment was a flicker in the chaotic panorama, a 90-second flash of unhinged violence overshadowed by the high drama inside, where rioters menaced in packs, legislators hid in fear and a protester was shot to death.
Now, nine months removed from the mayhem, Republicans bound to former President Donald Trump's unfounded assertion that the 2020 election was stolen from him have all but wished the day away, blocking the creation of a bipartisan investigative commission; blaming antifa, or Democrats, or the FBI; and minimising the overwhelming video evidence.
Even so, a reckoning is underway as prosecutors and congressional investigators seek to understand how a political rally devolved into an assault on the citadel of American democracy, how seemingly average citizens — duped by a political lie, goaded by their leaders and swept up in a frenzied throng — can unite in breathtaking acts of brutality.
This description generally fits the seven men, now bound together by federal prosecutors as co-defendants in an indictment charging them with myriad felonies. To a man, they are described in superlatives by relatives and friends: perfect neighbour, devout churchgoer, attentive father, good guy.
They include the bearded truck driver from Arkansas who weaponised Old Glory; a heavy-machine operator from Michigan who once modelled for the covers of romance novels; a fencing contractor from Georgia; a geophysicist from Colorado; a former Marine from Pennsylvania; a deputy sheriff from Tennessee; and a self-made businessman from Kentucky named Clayton Ray Mullins, 52, described as a well-intentioned person devoted to keeping his small country church afloat. He does not drink, smoke, curse or bother with social media, and prefers old westerns to the news.
The defendants say they thought this might be their last chance to experience a Trump rally. They say they had no intention of rioting or trespassing to keep Trump in office.
Even if this were true, why did Mullins join the mob overrunning the Capitol grounds? Why was he standing so close to the violent standoff with the police? Why did he pull on the leg of a downed officer under attack?
Sitting recently in his empty church, so far from Washington, Mullins began to weep as the question hung heavy over him, his family, his community, this country.
Why?
'We need patriots!'
The thing is, Mullins almost hadn't gone to Washington.
The hastily planned trip had depended on whether his wife, Nancy Mullins, could get time off from her job as a physical therapist. Once she got permission, the Mullins and one of his sisters, Tena Mullins Sisson, rented a Honda Accord and headed out.
"I told Clayton it was something to see," Nancy Mullins said of Washington. "Plus, you get to see Trump."
On Monday, January 4, the three Trump supporters from Kentucky drove more than 645km before stopping in southwestern Virginia. The next day they drove 580km more, parking on Constitution Avenue in time to do some sightseeing and catch the end of a "Stop the Steal" rally, where a tag team of speakers warned of a country on the precipice — of a fight being waged between good and evil, the godly and the godless.
Late the next morning, January 6, they made their way to the Ellipse for the "Save America March".
It was noon by the time the president took his place before the bank of American flags arrayed onstage. Standing behind a protective shield in a dark overcoat and black gloves, Trump exhorted his loyalists to march to the Capitol and somehow stop Congress from certifying the election. He said they would never take back their country with weakness; they had to show strength — and as they marched, "I'll be there with you."
In spirit only. After dispatching his followers, Trump vanished from view.
The Mullins were so far from the stage during Trump's long speech that they heard more echoes than words. "I think he said we were going to march," Nancy Mullins recalled.
Shortly before 1pm, protesters breached the barricades on the Capitol's west side to pour by the hundreds onto the manicured grounds. Amid the flapping flags and throaty chants of "USA! USA!" people were urging marchers to climb over the barriers. "We need patriots!" Nancy Mullins remembered someone shouting into a megaphone. "We need men!"
Clayton Mullins would later say that while he supported Trump's re-election — he liked the president's approach to business — he had also accepted the election results. "No one man has the power," he would say.
Still, he left his wife and sister behind and joined the trespassing throng.
Upside-down republic
The startling scenes inside the Capitol tend to eclipse the medieval civil war that was waged just beyond its doors. In suffocating clouds of chemical irritants, Americans fought other Americans with fists and cudgels, with bear spray and hunks of broken wood, roaring in combat frenzy and spilling blood on the white steps of their country's democratic center.
Throughout, Clayton Mullins was often in the frame, a Zelig among insurgents in black gloves and a gray winter coat, with a distinctive crop of thick brown hair.
Here he was, joining hundreds of others near the lower west terrace in singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" off-key. Here he was, at the front of a tense standoff between rioters and officers separated by barricades and differing understandings of patriotism, while a man in a Trump cap beside him sprayed the officers with an irritant, used his "Stop the Steal" sign to shield the blowback and melted back into the crowd.
Mullins winced as the chemical cloud hit his face. Still, he stayed on the scene.
By 2:45, he was near the fore of a roaring mob forcing police officers to backpedal on the terrace, their riot shields raised, their backs nearly to the wall. As scuffles broke out, someone near him was shouting, "Take their helmets! Take their face masks!"
By 3:00, Mullins was standing high up on the Capitol's ascending stone balustrade, holding an American flag and taking in the sweeping view of the raucous gathering below. He was not moving or chanting or even waving his flag. He was just standing, still as a sentry.
Circulating in the milling crowd around Mullins were six strangers destined to become his co-defendants.
One was Peter Stager, 42, a burly truck driver whose long, dark hair and full beard would distinguish him in any crowd. He had stopped to join the Trump rally on his way back from a delivery in New Jersey.
Also trespassing on the Capitol grounds that wintry afternoon was Jack Wade Whitton, 31, a former CrossFit instructor and fencing contractor, carrying a military-style backpack and wearing a red-billed "Trump 2020" baseball cap over his thinning brown hair.
There at the Capitol, too, was Jeffrey Sabol, 51, wearing a crash helmet and carrying a backpack containing a two-way radio, an earpiece and a bundle of zip ties. He had travelled from the Colorado mountain town of Kittredge, where people knew him as a rugby-playing father of three who worked as a geophysicist.
Others had answered Trump's call. Ronald McAbee, 27, a sheriff's deputy from Williamson County, Tennessee, had come prepared for action. He wore a red MAGA hat, reflective sunglasses and black gloves with metal knuckles. Text messages with a friend suggested that they expected violence.
And when Trump tweeted about the need for a strong turnout at the January 6 rally, a Michigan man named Logan Barnhart tweeted in response, "I'll be there."
Now here he was, moving through the crowd in an American-flag hat, his extraordinary physique covered by a hooded Caterpillar sweatshirt. Barnhart, 40, a heavy-machine operator from a Lansing suburb, had trained as a bodybuilder and modelled bare-chested for the covers of books like Stepbrother UnSEALed: A Bad Boy Military Romance.
Among the actual veterans trespassing on Capitol grounds was Michael Lopatic, 57, from Pennsylvania; 6-foot-4, well over 90kg and sporting a scraggly gray beard, he announced his military affiliation with his red Marines cap and his political affiliation with a "Trump 2020" T-shirt that said, "PTSD: Pretty Tired of Stupid Democrats."
Lopatic took part in the American invasion of Grenada, where he suffered injuries and hearing loss in a mortar explosion. He left the Marines on disability and, according to one of his lawyers, has not held a full-time job in years.
By New Year's Day, Lopatic had committed to rallying in Washington on Jan. 6. He wrote in a social media post, "UNITED WE STAND, GO FORTH AND FIGHT."
War on the West Terrace
With dusk approaching, mayhem reigned. At its centre was a fevered cluster of humanity on the Capitol's west side, mustering its collective rage to batter through an arched portal that figures prominently on Inauguration Day every four years.
The insurgents managed to get just inside the archway, where a wall of sweat-stained riot shields was blocking them at the beeping metal-detector checkpoint. In the surreal half-light, they kept pushing, pushing, moving like a body at war with itself.
"They're getting tired!" someone shouted. "We got fresh fucking meat here! Push 'em back!"
Amid the spasmodic violence, the unthinkable became routine: the throwing of poles like spears at the police, a vandal working unimpeded to smash a Capitol window. And at the archway's edge, a woman sprawled on the ground, unconscious.
This was Rosanne Boyland, 34, from Kennesaw, Georgia, a passionate Trump supporter whose embrace of conspiracy theories had worried her family. It was as if these outlandish beliefs — including that top Democrats belonged to a global pedophile ring — had become a replacement addiction for Boyland, who had worked hard at sobriety after years of substance abuse.
Mullins stood close by. He later said he was trying to stand over Boyland to protect her, with the undulating crush of people so strong that he temporarily lost his shoes.
Metropolitan Police Department officers in protective gear were now positioned at the threshold. Among them were Officers Blake Miller, Carter Moore and Andrew Wayte, all with less than four years on the force. They had just arrived in response to an emergency call: officers in need of assistance.
At 4:27, the fraught scene exploded. A roar went up as insurgents and police officers fought hand to hand. Someone threw a riot shield; someone swung a hockey stick; someone stumbled away with his face awash in blood.
From the back of the crowd, a man in a "Trump 2020" cap raised a middle finger high and rushed up like a cornerback intent on a tackle. This was Whitton. He and his six future co-defendants were all within yards of one another, all about to play their roles in the 90 seconds of brutality to come, as reflected in court documents, crowdsourced video and footage from officers' body cameras.
An unidentified rioter grabbed Wayte by the face and knocked him to the ground. Sabol, wearing a green military-style helmet, then yanked a baton from the officer's hand with such force that Sabol fell backward down the steps.
Whitton, meanwhile, began thrusting a metal crutch at those guarding the archway, targeting Miller in particular. He climbed over a railing, kicked at the fallen Wayte and wrestled with Miller, pulling the man by his helmet and dragging him down face first. Several rioters helped him, including Barnhart.
Returning to the fray, Sabol held the stolen police baton against Miller's neck, then jerked the officer into the mob while punching him in the back.
A few steps down stood Stager; in his hand was an American flag, attached to a pole. As Barnhart, Sabol and others dragged Miller down the steps, Stager raised the flagpole and struck the defenceless policeman three times.
He would later be filmed pointing at the Capitol and saying, "Death's the only remedy for what's in that building," and, "Everybody in there is a treasonous traitor."
McAbee was now right outside the door, his intentions as confusing as the patches he wore: one saying "Sheriff," the other featuring the emblem of the Three Percenters, the anti-government militia movement. He was bending over Wayte — his lawyer would later say to provide aid — when he was hit with a baton, possibly by Moore. An enraged McAbee began shoving, swinging and swearing.
At this point, a bearish, grey-bearded man in a Marines cap rushed up the steps, his T-shirt announcing a weariness with "Stupid Democrats". This was Lopatic.
As Moore tried to push past McAbee, Lopatic grabbed him by the head and began punching furiously. This freed up McAbee to grab Wayte by the torso, drag him down the steps and pin him to the ground.
Wayte was ultimately pulled into the violent sea. There, federal investigators say, rioters ripped off his helmet; stripped him of his baton, cellphone and gas mask; sprayed him with Mace; kicked him; struck him with poles; and stomped on him.
Throughout these frenetic 90 seconds, Boyland lay amid debris at the foot of the archway. Her stomach was exposed, her body jostled by rioters oblivious in their rage. In her outstretched hand were those red-white-and-blue sunglasses.
Boyland was suffering the effects of acute amphetamine intoxication, but police officers close by were unable to reach her because of the mob's furious offensive. Kneeling beside her, a friend frantically called for assistance but could not be heard above the clattering batons and profane roars.
Then came a lull. And someone screamed, "She's fucking dead!"
Epilogue
In the fresh wake of the deadly riot, a reeling country began to assess what just had happened and why. This included quantifying the physical and psychological injuries to more than 140 officers, among them Wayte, Moore and Miller. These officers, as well as the Metropolitan Police Department, declined to comment.
The assessment also required tracking down the many hundreds responsible, including seven particular men on the lower west terrace. If found and convicted, they would face years in prison.
Sabol returned home to Colorado. Fearing charges of sedition, federal prosecutors say, he destroyed anything that might be taken as anti-government and fried his electronic devices in a microwave oven. He then travelled to Boston, aiming to flee to Switzerland, but aborted the plan and began driving a rental car west. Along the way, he tossed his cellphone.
On January 11, police spotted a car moving erratically through New York's Rockland County. The bloodied driver, who apparently had been slashing himself with a razor, was Sabol, who explained that he was "done fighting".
Three days later, Stager — his identity revealed to the FBI by an acquaintance who recognised the bearded man swinging the flagpole — was arrested, his hair now short, his beard now a goatee. As officers led him to his jail cell, he seemed almost jovial, as if not grasping the severity of the charges.
Lopatic, the former Marine, drove back to Pennsylvania the night of the riot, discarding along the way the body camera he had removed from a besieged Miller just hours before. After a family member contacted the FBI, he was arrested on February 3 at home.
Whitton was arrested in Georgia on April 1, several weeks after a high school acquaintance tipped off the FBI. It took longer to find Barnhart and McAbee, the now-former deputy sheriff from Tennessee. But with the help of online crowdsourcing efforts, both men were finally arrested in mid-August.
At some point on the evening of January 6, Mullins left the fray. He made his way out of the Capitol's restricted area, back to where his wife and sister were waiting. His stricken face told them that something was wrong.
On the long walk back to their rental car, they later said, he wept. And on the long, two-day drive back to Kentucky, they said, he was silent.
Three weeks after the riot, the FBI received a tip that ultimately led to a bank in Mayfield, where an employee who had known Mullins for decades said that he had been in the lobby just the day before.
One evening in late February, Mullins drove his well-travelled Nissan Frontier out of his salvage yard and onto Highway 45, only to be pulled over minutes later by law enforcement officials. He spent a week in custody before being granted house arrest.
The very real prospect of spending a long time away from home looms over Mullins, who — along with his six co-defendants — has pleaded not guilty. Wearing an ankle monitor, he tries to carry on.
But never far from Mullins' mind is what he thought to himself on the evening of January 6 as he walked away from the profoundly damaged US Capitol, his face wet with tears: "We never should have come here."
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Dan Barry, Alan Feuer and Matthew Rosenberg
Photographs by: Jason Andrew, William DeShazer
© 2021 THE NEW YORK TIMES
