CHARLOTTE, N.C. — On Jan. 6, 2021, Matthew Beddingfield used a flag pole topped by an American flag to slash and stab at the genitalia of a police officer trying to keep him out of the U.S. Capitol.
“You need to back up. This is not the way to do it,” the officer said, according to an account presented in court.
“F--- you!,” Beddingfield replied, according to the prosecutor. “You’re on the wrong side.”
Soon, the Nash County man may find that it is he who’s on the wrong side — of a federal prison cell.
On Thursday, Beddingfield accepted a deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty in a Washington, D.C., courtroom to a single count of assault on a police officer.
The resident of Middlesex, 25 miles east of Raleigh, will be sentenced June 22. He was allowed to return to North Carolina until then.
Beddingfield’s crime carries a maximum sentence of eight years in prison. As a part of his plea deal, prosecutors have set a sentencing range of 37-46 months.
The longest sentence handed down so far to an N.C. defendant — 44 months — was part of a plea deal offered former Fort Bragg soldier James Mault, who also was charged with assaulting police.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, will have the final say and could go above or below what the lawyers in the case recommend.
Beddingfield, who was 21 at the time of the riot, is among at least 26 North Carolinians federally charged in connection with the violence.
On Jan. 6, 2021, thousands of Trump supporters fueled by the former president’s baseless claims of a stolen election stormed the Capitol to stop congressional certification of Trump’s defeat to now President Joe Biden.
Five deaths have been linked to the mob attack and 140 police officers defending the building were injured.
Almost 1,000 arrests have been made, including 325 charged with assaulting or impeding police.
Among the N.C. cases, Beddingfield’s stands out. He was out on bond for an attempted murder charge tied to the 2019 shooting of a Smithfield teenager when he drove to Washington with his father on Jan. 6. (Beddingfield later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge tied to the shooting and received probation.)
At the Capitol, prosecutors say, Beddingfield was among the first rioters to attack police lines, and was caught on camera giving a Nazi salute while carrying the American flag.
Inside the building, he joined a line of rioters who tried to storm the Senate wing and later entered the office of then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
In return for his plea on Thursday, prosecutors dropped two other felonies — civil disorder and remaining on restricted grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon — and multiple misdemeanors.
