WASHINGTON — An Arkansas man who participated in one of the most savage attacks on police on Jan. 6 pleaded guilty this week to assaulting police with a dangerous weapon.
Peter Stager, 43, of Conway, Arkansas, appeared before U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly on Thursday to enter his plea of guilty to the felony count. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to dismiss a number of other serious charges against Stager, including felony counts of obstruction of an official proceeding and civil disorder.
Stager was one of nine defendants indicted in connection with a violent assault on multiple officers who were attempting to defend the entrance to the Lower West Terrace Tunnel of the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021. One of those officers, a DC Police officer identified in court documents as “B.M.,” was grabbed and dragged down a set of stairs into the mob. While the officer was lying prone on the ground, rioters, including Stager, began beating him with objects.
“STAGER climbed the stairs while holding a flagpole with a United States flag affixed to it and used the pole to repeatedly strike B.M. while B.M. remained prone on the steps of the U.S. Capitol Building,” investigators wrote in an affidavit filed in January 2021.
Stager was identified in part thanks to a tip from a confidential source who’d seen him in videos at the Capitol. In one of the videos, Stager appeared to advocate for violence against members of Congress.
“Everybody in there is a treasonous traitor,” he said. “Death is the only remedy for what’s in that building.”
Stager was scheduled to be sentenced on July 24. Assaults on officers on the west side of the building, where Stager was located and where the majority of the most extreme violence of the day occurred, have resulted in some of the longest sentences in Capitol riot cases to date. Two men who pleaded guilty to joining in the assault on former DC Police Officer Mike Fanone were sentenced to more than seven years in prison each. Another man, former NYPD Officer Thomas Webster, received 10 years in prison for attacking DC Police Officer Noah Rathbun.
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