Rioter Who Hit Police With Baton Convicted

An Indiana man pleaded guilty on Thursday to charges that he used a metal baton, a lamp, and other makeshift weapons to assault police officers who were protecting the US Capitol from a mob of Donald Trump supporters. Curtis Logan Tate, 32, struck at least two officers with the baton that he brought to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, hitting one in the hand and the other repeatedly on the helmet. Tate also threw a broken table leg, a floor lamp, a speaker box, and a shoe at officers guarding a tunnel entrance on the Capitol's Lower West Terrace. He struck a third officer's arm and damaged a window when he threw the speaker box, the AP reports.

Tate pleaded guilty to three felony counts of assaulting, resisting, or impeding police using a deadly or dangerous weapon, court records show. He's scheduled to be sentenced on July 9 in Washington, DC. Guidelines call for Tate to receive a term of imprisonment ranging from five years, three months to six years, six months, though the judge isn't bound by that recommendation. Tate lived in Jeffersonville, Indiana, when he and a friend traveled to Trump's "Stop the Steal" rally near the White House on Jan. 6. He posted videos on Instagram as he stormed the Capitol with other rioters. Tate was arrested in August 2023; a federal magistrate judge ordered him jailed until his case is resolved.

A lawyer who represented Tate at Thursday's hearing didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
New arrests: Also on Thursday, FBI agents arrested two men on Jan. 6-related felony charges, per the AP. David Scott Kuntz, 53, of Elizabeth, Indiana, is charged with obstructing the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress for certifying President Biden's 2020 victory. Kuntz told FBI agents he is an adherent of the "Three Percenters" militia movement and belongs to a militia group called the Grey Ghost Partisan Kentucky Rangers. And Lance Michael Ligocki, 34, of Oakwood, Illinois, is charged with attacking police with a flagpole attached to a "Trump" flag.

(More Capitol riot stories.)