WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors unsealed charges Tuesday against a Utah man accused of assaulting police at the U.S. Capitol – the first new case to be unsealed since former President Donald Trump won reelection promising to pardon those involved in the Jan. 6 riot.
Daniel Van Oaks Jr., 54, of Alpine, Utah, was charged with felony counts of civil disorder, assaulting police and robbery, along with multiple misdemeanor offenses. He was expected to make his initial appearance in a federal court in Utah next week.
According to charging documents, after Jan. 6 the FBI received nearly a dozen different tips about a man in a tan jacket and red baseball cap seen on bodyworn camera footage forcing his way through a police line and then lunging at an officer and stealing his baton. All of the tips identified the subject – identified in an FBI BOLO as “AFO – 489,” and dubbed “#Bundlebrawler” by the online Sedition Hunters community – as Van Oaks. Three of the tipsters said they knew Van Oaks personally.
Investigators found Van Oaks’ Facebook profile, where they discovered multiple photographs and videos he’d uploaded from the Capitol on Jan. 6. In one video, according to charging documents, Van Oaks celebrated after learning other rioters had breached an office suite used by then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
“What are we outside here for?” investigators said Van Oaks says in the video. “We should be inside. I’m so disappointed in myself. Fox News is saying protesters are out of control. We haven’t even begun to get out of control yet.”
In another video recording while on the Upper West Terrace of the Capitol, Van Oaks allegedly boasted about stealing the officer’s baton, which he referred to as his “little souvenir.”
“I kicked some butt. I got a baton from one of the cops, riffed it off of his hands,” Van Oaks reportedly said. “I was trying to pull him down towards up over the wall and he wisely let go of his baton and I broke through the police barricade and ran around, took a couple guys out, leading the charge. And about 100 more cops showed up because of what I did. I had some people following me out.”
Investigators said Van Oaks also said, “They won this round, but we will be back,” and said in a Facebook live video that his wife had told him and his son, who traveled with him to D.C., to “have fun storming the castle” before they left.
“Pretty fun, the revolution is over, we had fun storming the castle,” Van Oaks said in another video. “I never had so much tear gas bombs go off around me as I did today. We had loads of fun, I got a baton too, but it was gone. I should have tossed it in the bushes more, so it was more hidden.”
While Van Oaks’ is nearly the 1,600th defendant to be charged in connection with the riot, he’s the first whose charges have been unsealed following former President Donald Trump’s victory at the polls earlier this month. The Justice Department is widely expected to drop and further prosecutions related to Jan. 6 once Trump takes office in January, and Trump himself has promised to pardon some or all of those who took part in the riot. The special counsel’s office has indicated it intends to follow Justice Department policy and wind down Trump’s own Jan. 6 case now that he has won reelection.
Despite Trump’s win, federal judges in D.C. have declined so far to vacate existing sentencing dates and have continued to schedule new dates next year beyond inauguration day. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper scheduled a North Carolina man’s sentencing for March after he pleaded guilty to four misdemeanor counts. Cooper noted the hearing could be easily vacated if the situation were to change. The defendant in that case, Blaze News writer Steve Baker, told WUSA9 he expects to be near the “top of the list” if Trump does indeed issue presidential pardons.
In the 46 months since the Capitol riot, more than 1,500 people have been charged, including nearly 600 people charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding police. More than 1,200 defendants have now pleaded guilty or been convicted at trial.