WASHINGTON — A Marine Corps veteran who carried a crowbar to the U.S. Capitol and assaulted police with pepper spray on Jan. 6 pleaded guilty Tuesday to two felony counts.
Ryan Taylor Nichols, of Longview, Texas, appeared before U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth on Tuesday to plead guilty to two counts: obstruction of an official proceeding and assaulting, resisting or impeding police. Nichols was immediately remanded back into custody as part of his plea agreement with the Justice Department. He was temporarily released last year by another judge for the purpose of preparing for trial.
Nichols, who began a search-and-rescue non-profit after leaving the Marine Corps, was indicted in 2021 alongside another Texan, Alex Harkrider, for their alleged roles in the Capitol riot. Nichols faced seven counts, including additional felony charges for carrying a dangerous weapon. Under the terms of his agreement, Nichols pleaded guilty to a lesser felony count of assaulting police that avoided a weapons enhancement.
"I make no excuses," Nichols said during the hearing. "There's no one else to blame. I'm the one to blame."
At trial, Nichols would have faced images of himself brandishing a crowbar at the Capitol and spraying a large canister of pepper spray at police in the Lower West Terrace Tunnel – the site of some of the most brutal and prolonged violence against police on Jan. 6. Jurors also would have seen multiple videos of Nichols before and after Jan. 6, including many he recorded himself, seemingly calling for violence.
In a video recorded on the evening of Jan. 5, Nichols can be heard berating police and warning of violence the following day, yelling at one point, “Heads will f***ing roll! We will not be told ‘no’ any longer!”
On the day of the riot, Nichols recorded a video of himself and Harkrider walking to the Capitol from the Ellipse with hundreds of others. In the video, Nichols says, “I’m hearing reports that Pence caved. If Pence caved, I’m telling you, we’re going to drag motherf***ers through the streets. You f***ing politicians are going to get drug through the streets.”
At the Capitol, Nichols can be seen in multiple videos inciting the crowd. In one, he brandishes a crowbar while yelling, “This is our country!” In another, Nichols can be seen standing on a ledge near a shattered window and yelling, “If you have a weapon, you need to get your weapon!”
Once he returned to his hotel room on the evening of Jan. 6, Nichols continued recording.
“So if you want to know where Ryan Nichols stands, Ryan Nichols stands for violence,” he said in one. “Ryan Nichols is done allowing his country to be stolen. And I understand that the first Revolutionary War, folks, it was violent. We had to be violent and take our country back. Well guess what? The second Revolutionary War, right now, the American Revolutionary War that’s going on right now, it started today on a Wednesday. It’s going to be violent.”
Later in the same video, Nichols picked up his crowbar and said, “So, yes, today, Ryan Nichols… Ryan Nichols grabbed his f***ing weapon and he stormed the Capitol and fought for freedom."
Although the terms of Nichols' plea agreement called for him to be returned to custody, Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas Brasher suggested the government likely would have sought pre-sentencing incarceration anyway because Nichols remains a danger to the community.
"While he has pleaded guilty, he has not at any point renounced his calls for violence," Brasher said.
Another one of Nichol's attorneys, Joseph McBride, protested that he has been prevented from making public statements about the case and should not be penalized for that.
Nichols’ case, which was originally set for trial in July 2022, had been marked by repeated delays, as well as claims from McBride that the government was engaged in a “plot” against Nichols. As recently as September, Nichols’ attorneys wrote in a court filing they intended to present an entrapment defense at trial and argued an unknown individual known as 1% Watchdog who communicated with Nichols on a Zello chat might have been “working alongside, and/or under the direction of” the government to entice Nichols to come to D.C. on Jan. 6. In a November order releasing Nichols to house arrest under extreme restrictions so he could prepare for trial, U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan said he found no basis for another of McBride’s theories: that corrections officials had taken a thumb drive from Nichols’ cell and surreptitiously copied it.
“You remind me of a man trying to leap over a chasm in two bounds,” Hogan told McBride.
On Tuesday, prosecutors asked Lamberth to question Nichols directly about whether he was still maintaining, as his attorney has, that he was defending himself or others when he peppered sprayed police on Jan. 6.
"You are in fact guilty and have no self-defense you wish to assert?" Lamberth asked.
"Yes, your honor," Nichols said.
Nichols will be sentenced sometime next year after a pre-sentencing report is completed. He will receive credit for nearly two years spent in pre-trial detention following his arrest.