NC man who gave Nazi salute at Capitol stays jailed after feds appeal judge’s release
A North Carolina man accused of attacking police at the U.S. Capitol with a flagpole and who was later photographed giving a Nazi salute toward the building will remain jailed after prosecutors announced an appeal of a judge’s decision Tuesday to release him.
After four hours of oral arguments spread over two days, U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui of Washington announced he would allow 21-year-old Matthew Beddingfield to return to eastern North Carolina to await trial.
Beddingfield, who lives in Middlesex, a small Nash County town about 25 miles east of Raleigh, faces multiple felony counts stemming from the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by a mob of Donald Trump supporters attempting to overturn the former president’s election loss to Joe Biden. He was arrested last month, indicted Friday and has been jailed in Virginia, some 90 miles from D.C.
Faruqui was setting the terms of Beddingfield’s release to his grandfather’s supervision when Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean Murphy asked the judge to delay his decision pending the government’s appeal to a higher court.
Faruqui agreed. He then spoke to Beddingfield for likely the final time.
“As you go about your life, please know that I believed in you. I put my neck on the line,” the judge said. “I do believe that you have it in you to make good choices ... You have a long life in front of you. You should not be throwing it away.”
Beddingfield is the second youngest of at least 18 North Carolinians facing charges tied to the Capitol attack. Five deaths are linked to the riot. About 140 police officers were injured. More than 775 arrests have been made.
Beddingfield’s freedom will now be determined by U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols of Washington. A hearing has not been scheduled.
U.S. flag, Nazi salute
According to an FBI affidavit filed in his case, Beddingfield was among the first wave of the mob to attack police. He jumped a barricade and battled officers at least three times. In the first assault, he used the pole that flew an American flag to jab at officers. In the others, which were caught on camera both inside and outside of the Capitol, Beddingfield appears to be throwing a metal rod at police, the affidavit says.
In one of the signature images from the event, Beddingfield was photographed holding his American flag and pole in his right hand while he raised his left arm in a “Sieg Heil” salute.
At the time, Beddingfield was out on bond on an attempted murder charge in North Carolina tied to the December 2019 shooting of a 17-year-old Latino in a Walmart parking lot in Smithfield. In August, he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of Assault with a Deadly Weapon and received two years of probation. Beddingfield’s family said the shooting occurred when he was the victim of an attempted robbery.
On Jan. 28 — 10 days before his arrest in connection with the Capitol insurrection — Beddingfield was charged with reckless driving in North Carolina after being clocked going 110 mph in a 65 mph zone on Interstate 40, according to Murphy’s filing.
After his February arrest, when the FBI searched the home Beddingfield shared with his parents and a younger sibling, agents say they found thousands of rounds of .22-caliber ammunition and at least four weapons — an allegation that Beddingfield’s attorney contends was not accurate.
Reclaiming America
Beddingfield maintained an active and disturbing presence on social media, often using the handle of “@rightwing.dissident” to espouse white supremacist views that were drenched with threats of violence, the government’s filing shows.
“I’d like to reclaim America,” he wrote on Instagram on Jan. 19, “and it’s fine if a few of my peoples enemies are ‘hurt’ in the process.”
Last April, while Beddingfield was on pre-trial release and banned from using social media, he viciously sparred on Instagram with a female poster who held opposing political views.
“Heil Hitler,” Beddingfield wrote, according to the government filing. “you’re a n***** lover that’s why you have monkey lives matter in your bio.”
In February, when he was baited on Instagram as being a “cracker,” Beddingfield fired back, “Yeah if this was a serious country I’d be allowed to hang you myself.”
Beddingfield’s attorney, Assistant Federal Public Defender Kyana Givens of Raleigh, used written and oral arguments to ask the judge to allow her client to return home under house arrest, ankle monitoring and other restrictions.
On Tuesday she told Faruqui that Beddingfield had proven not to be a safety threat. As to his white supremacy posts online, Givens, who is Black, said Beddingfield “showed no hesitation” working with her on his defense.
“What I can tell you is the court has his attention,” she said.
Murphy argued in a court filing last week that Beddingfield’s violent behavior at the Capitol, his criminal record in North Carolina, and the fact that he faces a lengthy prison sentence if convicted of his Capitol-related felony charges make him both a threat to public safety and a threat to flee.
Murphy also focused much of his written call for detention on what he described as Beddingfield’s frequent and recent use of hate speech online toward Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans and the LGBTQ community. He said Beddingfield has already proven that he is willing to act out his rhetoric.
“In these messages, Beddingfield builds a house using a framework of white supremacy and the finishing work of a craving to see violence befall members of marginalized communities topped with the urge to cause that pain and death himself,” Murphy wrote.
That said, the prosecutor argued that the government was not advocating that Beddingfield “be punished for his social or political views.”
Rather, he singled out what he described as Beddingfield’s “penchant for matching violent words with violent acts.”
He continued to make that argument in court on Tuesday. Beddingfield, he said, cannot be trusted.
“However you cut this, however you look at this, it is the government’s position that there are no conditions of release that can ensure the community’s safety,” he told the judge.
Faruqui disagreed. He said he found Beddingfield’s previous conviction for a violent crime and his social media comments as disturbing, but not decisive.
“What occurred on Jan. 6 was horrific. The loss of life. A threat to our very democracy ... The correct election result did occur,” he said.
But since the Capitol, Beddingfield has not “engaged in political violence ... There has to be some sense of a restart. It does not damn him (forever) to pretrial detention.”
He banned Beddingfield from seeing his father, who had joined Beddingfield at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
But he ended his comments on an optimistic note — that he was offering Beddingfield “an off ramp” from the radicalization toward which he was headed.
This story was originally published March 8, 2022 at 6:38 PM with the headline "NC man who gave Nazi salute at Capitol stays jailed after feds appeal judge’s release."
