WASHINGTON — A Donald Trump supporter who federal authorities say built a giant pro-Trump billboard that the mob of Trump supporters used as a battering ram against police officers during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was arrested on Tuesday.
Jeffrey Newcomb, a 41-year-old from Polk, Ohio, faces several charges, including felony counts of obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder and assaulting, resisting or impeding federal officers while using or carrying a deadly or dangerous weapon. The FBI says he later bragged about his work on X.
“Went to Jan 6th to peacefully protest in the loudest way possible: With a 13ft by 10ft signs on custom made aluminum wagon,” Newcomb wrote on a now-deleted X profile in 2023, FBI prosecutors said. “I spent $700 on this. Keeping my identity a secret because bullets are expensive.”
Several other Jan. 6 defendants have been charged with using the sign — which read, in all caps, “Trump 2020 Keep America Great.” — as a battering ram during the attack.
“I went up to the Capitol but was blocked by pylons so the guys around came and picked it [the sign] up the proceed to throw it at the police,” Newcomb said, according to the FBI.
The FBI said Newcomb also wrote that “one of the protesters found the sign[] and put it up on the Capitol. (Wasn’t me).”
The FBI says they traced surveillance cameras that show Newcomb “moving the sign around Constitution Avenue, NW, and other areas near the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally held near the White House” and that once he reached the steps Newcomb, “with other rioters assisting, passed his giant metal-framed ‘TRUMP’ sign from the southwestern portion of the West Plaza mob toward the center-front of the crowd.”
“The metal sign frame was approximately eight feet tall and ten feet wide, welded with screws, and supported by large casters that were about the size of a person’s head. Rioters cheered the sign’s arrival and many in the crowd helped pass the sign closer and closer to the police line,” the FBI said.
Newcomb and other rioters “then started pushing the sign on a path to ram it into the police line,” then ” fell as he began to walk up the plaza’s steps,” and then “got back up and grabbed the sign once again as the mob resumed pushing the sign forward,” according to the FBI
As police officers “struggled to address the danger caused by the sign,” Newcomb “dropped back and, at one point, supported rioters continuing to shove the sign towards the police line by pushing on the rioters’ backs,” the FBI said. “As the police were struck by the sign, they easily could have been knocked over due to the frame’s sheer size, and the sharp edges and corners were readily capable of causing slicing or splitting injuries,” they said.
Last week, Trump called Jan. 6 “a day of love” and falsely claimed that his supporters were unarmed. Many of the rioters were armed with a wide variety of weapons including firearms, stun guns, flagpoles, bear spray and even explosive devices during the siege on the Capitol, which injured more than 140 officers and resulted in several deaths.
“There were no guns down there. We didn’t have guns. The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns. And when I say we, these are people that walked down — this was a tiny percentage of the overall which nobody sees and nobody, nobody shows. But that was a day of love,” he said.
One Trump supporter who assaulted police recently said ahead of her sentencing that she was “duped” by the former president’s lies about the 2020 election.
More than 1,500 people have been charged in connection with the attack, and prosecutors have secured convictions of more than 1,100 defendants. Judges have sentenced more than 600 Jan. 6 rioters to prison, with sentences ranging from a few days behind bars to 22 years in federal prison, for a Proud Boys leader convicted of seditious conspiracy.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
