Ex-QAnon supporter pleads guilty to assaulting police with Trump sign on Jan. 6
WASHINGTON — A Pennsylvania man who said he was influenced by the QAnon movement pleaded guilty Tuesday to assaulting police officers with a giant Trump sign at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Marshall Neefe, 25, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers during a court hearing. Neefe admitted that he wrote after the attack that he was “bringing a gun next time” and that he wanted to hurt officers who protected the Capitol.
The enormous, blue Trump sign that the mob used as a weapon was at least 8 feet tall and 10 feet wide, and “supported by large casters that were approximately the size of a man’s head,” according to the agreed-upon statement of offense in Neefe’s case. One of the U.S. Capitol Police officers who was part of the line said it took at least 15 officers to carry the sign away.
“If I had it my way every cop who hurled a baton or maced on [sic] of us would be lined up and put down,” Neefe admitted he wrote on Jan. 6. “We made sure they know we f—ing OWN them.”
Before the Capitol attack, Neefe admitted that he really wanted to “crack some commie skulls” and that he made a wooden club that he brought to D.C. that he’d dubbed “The Commie Knocker.”
Neefe, according to the government, told the FBI after his arrest in September 2021 that he was “heavily influenced by QAnon conspiracy theories” and that he stapled an American flag to a wooden club to use against “possible Antifa.” He said he lost the club inside the Capitol, and that he “no longer supports QAnon conspiracy theories,” according to the government.
Neefe, according to the government, exchanged racist messages with his co-defendant Charles Smith, expressing a desire to lynch Black Americans. He also spoke of a desire to kill Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “Looks like mcconnel needs a bullet in the head,” he wrote in December 2020, according to the government.
Neefe’s plea agreement states that his sentencing guidelines are 41 to 51 months in federal prison.
Back in March, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that Neefe should continue to be held until trial because he posed a threat.
“Some members of the public and even a few members of Congress retain the impression that peaceful political protesters are being held in jail pending trial,” Lamberth wrote. “Neefe’s detention disproves that delusion. Neefe is detained not because of his beliefs, but because of his alleged violent actions and his expressed intent to engage in violent activity again.”
On Monday, a jury found a former New York City Police Department officer who assaulted a D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officer on Jan. 6 guilty on six counts. In a separate case, a judge sentenced a former U.S. Marine who assaulted law enforcement officers to more than two years in federal prison.
Nearly 800 people have been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, and more than 250 have pleaded guilty. As NBC News has reported, the FBI has the names of hundreds of additional Jan. 6 rioters who have not yet been arrested, and the Justice Department is seeking millions in new resources to prosecute the cases.
