Three undercover Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers joined the march of protesters up the northwest side of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021—including one who climbed over a barricade and pushed others toward the Capitol and another who walked behind Ashli Babbitt and predicted that “someone will get shot,” according to newly disclosed court documents.
New filings by Jan. 6 defendant William Pope of Topeka, Kansas, also show MPD bicycle officers stopping four armed men in plainclothes on Jan. 6. The men turned out to be federal agents. Video included with Pope’s filings also shows uniformed MPD officers saying, “We were set up [to fail on Jan. 6].”
Information in the court papers is likely to rekindle the debate about the role that undercover officers and agents played in the riots of Jan. 6 and why the U.S. Department of Justice and federal judges have kept the evidence under seal and away from public view.
“This video clearly evidences undercover law enforcement officers urging the crowds to advance up the stairs and scaffolding towards the Capitol on January 6,” Pope wrote in one motion. “The government may claim that incidents like this did not happen, but the facts show they did.
“Since the government cannot be trusted to disclose these facts, it becomes even more important that defense teams, including Pro Se defendants, be able to directly examine the evidence.”
The three undercover MPD officers approached the northwest corner of the Capitol grounds at about 1:40 p.m. on Jan. 6, one of the motions states. Officer 1, who was filming their journey, joined the crowd in chanting, “Drain the swamp!”
When a group of men ran past them toward the Capitol, Officer 2—wearing a Trump beanie—remarked, “Those guys are getting shot,” the motion said.
At the base of the scaffold stairs, Officer 1 joined the crowd in chanting, “Whose house? Our house!”
In one motion, Pope describes how Officer 1 climbed over a barricade: “Officer 1 began yelling at people in front of him to ‘Go, go, go!’ As they climbed bicycle racks, Officer 1 yelled for the crowd to ‘help him up, help him up!' followed by ‘push him up, push him up!’”
“Needing help to get up, Officer 1 asked a nearby man to give him a boost,” the motion reads. “The man gives Officer 1 a lift up, and Officer 1 says ‘Thanks, bro.’”
Right Behind Ashli Babbitt
At one point, Officers 2 and 3 were almost directly behind Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt on the exterior stairs, about an hour before Babbitt was gunned down at the entrance to the Speaker’s Lobby, Pope said in a Twitter post on Feb. 18.Video shot by the undercover officers is under court seal.
Pope argued in his motions that the Department of Justice is trying to prevent him from accessing the full Jan. 6 evidence databases. He is defending himself against seven criminal counts brought by federal prosecutors in February 2021. He asked U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras to compel the department to give him full access to discovery materials.
In a motion filed with the court on Feb. 17, Pope included a tranche of bodycam video with evidence not disclosed publicly before.
The bodycam footage of three MPD bicycle officers—Tyquan Brown, Daniel Styles, and Christopher Vanacore—shows them stopping at 12:19 p.m. a group of four men and a woman who are walking east during then-President Donald Trump’s speech at the Ellipse. “Is anyone armed?” Brown asks. “We all are,” the men said, adding that they were law enforcement officials. The woman was not armed.
The four men show the MPD officers their law enforcement credentials and are then allowed to go on their way. The IDs all appear very similar, but the video is not of sufficient resolution to read what agency they are from. Brown chides one of the men, saying, “You’ve got to do a little bit better at hiding it,” pointing to his concealed handgun.
‘They Set Us Up’
“They set us the [expletive] up,“ the officer said. ”That’s what they did. They set us up.“They set up [Unit] 64, absolutely, and then they ask you all to come two hours later. They set us up.”
Lazewski replied, “They needed everybody right away,” to which the other officer said, “Nah, right away, they set us the [expletive] up. We ain’t got [expletive].”
A few moments later, the unidentified officer said, “Take this mother[expletive],” and waved his hand at the Capitol in disgust.
“I didn’t know we were coming up for this or I would have made sure we all had our masks,” the officer told Lazewski.
“I didn’t realize how bad ... they set us up to fail,” Lazewski said.
“They did,” the other officer replied.
‘Keep the March Going’
Video from the bodycam of MPD officer Terry Thorne shows him imploring protesters on the way down Constitution Avenue to the Capitol from Trump’s speech at 12:30 p.m. to “keep the march going.”“Let’s keep it going,” Thorne says, waving protesters away from a side street. “Let’s keep the march going. Let’s keep it going. Guys, let’s keep the march going.”
On Alioto’s video, Thau is shown using pepper spray that is partially blown back in officers’ faces. “Hey Danny,” Alioto says. “Watch the wind direction!”
“I don’t [expletive] know,“ the man replies. ”You want to talk about getting caught with your pants down. We have no direction. Nobody can get on the [expletive] radio.
“I called the Command Center and let them know that you guys are here with us. At least you’re accounted for.”
Officers in that section of the Capitol were looking for a man who might have been armed. Someone asked the Capitol Police supervisor how they could identify undercover operatives.
“They will have a wristband. Their guns will have a candy stripe on the barrel,“ he said. ”I don’t know the wristband color, but they’ll have a wristband somewhere.”
