He stormed the Capitol and a senator’s office. Then he became a cop in a small NC town.
John Joseph Carl barged through walls of officers and through the door of a U.S. senator’s office in the U.S. Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021, according to a criminal complaint filed this week.
Then he became a cop.
FBI agents interviewed the 41-year-old in February 2021 but arrested him Thursday. He joined the Pinetops Police Department in December 2023 after graduating from training at an eastern North Carolina community college, according to the college’s website. The town of Pinetops is about 70 miles east of Raleigh.
Carl’s case file was sealed, not available to the public, on Friday morning, but the United States attorney for the District of Columbia released the criminal complaint detailing FBI interviews with Carl and his riotmate.
That person, whose name has been redacted from the documents, turned himself in three days after the insurrection. He then named Carl, too.
On February 17, 2021, FBI agents interviewed Carl, and he admitted to participating in the riot and showed footage he recorded as he pushed against Capitol police and breached the building. He’d come from former President Donald Trump’s rally on the National Mall, according to a news release from U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves.
“On our side, there wasn’t a whole lot of like swinging or throwing ... it was just you know guys putting their shoulder in and the police with their shields pushing back on the crowd,” Carl said during an interview, according to a criminal complaint.
The FBI says Carl “joined other aggressive rioters and held his ground against officers attempting to move him back.”
Instead of listening to officers, he “raised his arms to push back against officers ... and grabbed an officer’s arm and baton,” according to body worn camera footage.
That all happened around 2 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021. By 3:05 p.m., Carl and his unnamed companion entered Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley’s office.
Carl is charged with a felony offense of obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder and misdemeanor offenses of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, and parading, picketing, and demonstrating in a Capitol building.
Pinetops police referred an inquiry Friday from The Charlotte Observer to the town attorney, J. Brian Pridgen, who said in an email that Carl had been employed by town police since June 5, 2023.
“At the time of his hiring and during his employment, the Town of Pinetops had no knowledge of Officer Carl’s possible involvement” in the Jan. 6 riot, the email said. “Based on the charges brought by the FBI, Officer Carl has been suspended pending an investigation.”
More than 1,488 people in nearly all 50 states have been charged with crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol. Nearly 550 of those people were also charged with felonies for assaulting or impeding law enforcement, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
If convicted and sentenced, Carl will join more than 30 North Carolina defendants who have been sentenced so far.
In September, Laura Steele, a former North Carolina police officer from High Point, was sentenced to 366 days in jail. In November, police arrested a former Marine living in the Lake Norman area.
Members of the U.S. House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack found that Trump provoked his supporters to violence through his false allegations of fraud in the 2020 election.
In North Carolina, CNN recently reported that the Republican nominee for state superintendent of public instruction, Michele Morrow, posted a video on Jan. 6, 2021, in which she called on Trump to invoke a federal law that “completely puts the Constitution to the side” so that he could remain president.
This story was originally published August 16, 2024 at 1:45 PM with the headline "He stormed the Capitol and a senator’s office. Then he became a cop in a small NC town.."
