WASHINGTON — A Maryland man wants a judge to limit a jury from seeing jailhouse letters he wrote to a sheriff asking for help and other statements made to law enforcement after his arrest on Capitol riot charges.
Daniel Egtvedet, of Garrett County, Maryland, is scheduled to begin trial June 6 before U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper. Egtvedt was indicted last March on multiple felony counts in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, including civil disorder, obstruction of an official proceeding and assaulting and resisting police.
Video released following a legal challenge by a media coalition that includes WUSA9 appears to show Egtvedt berating and physically engaging with police on at least three different occasions on Jan. 6. The video appears to show Egtvedt entering the Capitol by force with a large group, shouting at officers in the crypt, attempting to push past officers in the Hall of Columns and eventually being restrained by at least five officers, before he is pushed backward, knocking into a column.
Egtvedt’s attorney, Kira Anne West, says her client suffered a concussion and lost consciousness when his head slammed into the column, although the video appears to show Egtvedt never stopped screaming as police picked him up off the floor and pushed him out of the Capitol. West said Egtvedt then went on to make “numerous” statements outside the Capitol while possibly concussed – but it’s statements he made to police more than a month later she wants a judge to suppress.
In a motion filed before Cooper, West says Egtvedt was improperly induced into speaking to police during his arrest without warning of his constitutional rights. She also argued a “coercive atmosphere” created by police custody and interrogation resulted in undermining the privilege against self-incrimination.
In a response motion filed by the DOJ on Monday, prosecutors elaborated on exactly what statements Egtvedt allegedly made. They include asking an FBI agent if he’d recorded him at the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6 – an implicit admission Egtvedt was there – and allegedly telling a Maryland State Trooper they would need multiple officers to transfer him to D.C. and “that he would fight to prevent them from taking him.”
While in custody in Maryland, Egtvedt also handwrote two letters to the Garrett County Sheriff asking him to intervene in his case. In the letters, Egtvedt described himself as a “legal citizen” of Garrett County and claimed the arrest was violating his “organic constitutional rights.” Egtvedt also warned that if he was transferred to D.C. it would “place me as a political prisoner in a foreign land.” Later, while being driven to the District, Egtvedt reportedly asked officers what “port” he was being taken to and mentioned “maritime law.”
Many of those phrases, including the reference to “maritime law” in particular, are associated with the sovereign citizen movement – a loose, right-wing and anti-government ideology that often believes, among other things, that county sheriffs are the highest law enforcement officers in the land.
Egtvedt’s attorney said Tuesday she was not aware of any links he had to the sovereign citizen movement.
Egtvedt, a former Republican donor, was arrested last year while trying to physically stop his brother from taking their mother to get a COVID-19 vaccine which, he told police, he believed was a population control method from the government. Egtvedt also posted supportively of the QAnon conspiracy theory on Facebook.
Prosecutors have argued all of Egtvedt’s statements to police should be admissible and that the letters he wrote to the sheriff were voluntary statements.
Egtvedt was initially held in pretrial detention, but was granted release on bond in April under restriction to his home in Oakland, Maryland.
It was not immediately clear whether the Garrett County Sheriff ever responded to Egtvedt’s request.
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