WASHINGTON — A Bentonville man was sentenced to 25 months in prison on Monday for his role in the U.S. Capitol riot.
Nathan Earl Hughes, 35, told the judge he regrets his actions on Jan. 6, 2021.
“I take responsibility for my mistakes, the fact that I was there and that things got out of hand,” said Hughes. “I wasn’t there to cause chaos. That wasn’t my goal.”
Hughes pleaded guilty in August to three charges but denied assaulting a police officer as federal prosecutors accused.
They said Hughes elbowed the officer once, then struck him twice with his hand while trying to take a riot shield away from him during the melee between rioters and police in the Lower West Terrace tunnel.
In a sentencing hearing on Monday, U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols said he believed Hughes’ actions constituted aggravated assault when Hughes punched or attempted to punch the officer.
From a video shown in court, it wasn’t clear whether Hughes actually struck the officer.
“The government has proven Mr. Hughes did in fact assault Officer M.M. when he struck or attempted to strike him with his hand,” said Nichols, citing a section of the U.S. Sentencing Commission guidelines that defines aggravated assault.
Hughes had four co-defendants in his case. They received sentences ranging from six to 18 months in prison.
“Grappling with and punching at an officer… that conduct was somewhat worse than any of his co-defendants here,” Nichols said during the hearing.
Nichols noted that trying to take an officer’s riot shield would also be considered common law assault, but aggravated assault ratchets up the sentence based on federal guidelines.
The government had asked Nichols to sentence Hughes to 51 months in prison, arguing that “Hughes’s conduct constituted aggravated assault because it was a felonious assault that involved the intent to commit another felony (Civil Disorder).”
Hughes’ attorney, William L. Shipley, suggested probation instead. But in Monday’s hearing, Shipley said a sentence along the lines of the other four co-defendants would be appropriate.
Nichols said the sentencing guidelines — with aggravated assault — called for a prison term of 33 to 41 months.
Nichols said there were some factors that worked in Hughes’ favor. He’s a successful businessman with no criminal history and a newborn child, said the judge.
But Hughes “displayed a significant disrespect for the rule of law,” said Nichols.
Besides 25 months in prison, the judge also ordered that Hughes’ sentence be followed by three years of supervised release. He also ordered Hughes to pay a $5,000 fine.
According to court filings from his attorney, Hughes expects a pardon from President-elect Donald Trump when he takes office Jan. 20.
Nichols denied motions from Hughes to postpone his sentencing until after Trump’s inauguration.
On Aug. 6, Hughes pleaded guilty to three charges in connection with the riot, including two felonies — 18 U.S.C. Sec. 231(a)(3), interfering with police during a civil disorder; and 18 U.S.C. Sec 111(a)(1), assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers or employees.
According to Shipley, Hughes denies assaulting a police officer but admits to impeding them.
The misdemeanor charge Hughes pleaded guilty to was 40 U.S.C. §5104(e)(2)(E), impeding passage through the Capitol grounds or buildings.
In a court filing on Thursday, Shipley said he would present video at the sentencing hearing to show that Hughes didn’t strike the officer, but Shipley presented no such video evidence during Monday’s hearing.
At Hughes’ plea hearing on Aug. 6, Nichols said Hughes would be sentenced along the same lines as other Jan. 6 defendants, noting that he had sentenced the four co-defendants in Hughes’ case.
But Hughes’ actions were much worse than those of his co-defendants, wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean McCauley in his Dec. 6 sentencing memorandum.
“None of the codefendants were charged with or convicted of assault as Hughes has been,” wrote McCauley. “All the codefendants engaged in synchronized pushing with the crowd against the police, but none of them struck a particular officer, much less three times as Hughes did.”
According to the government’s Dec. 6 filing, Hughes grabbed an officer’s baton, to which the officer maintained a firm grip, and began pulling him. That knocked the officer off-balance and opened him up to further assaults from additional rioters as he tried to clear them from the tunnel. Then, just before 3:19 p.m., Hughes grabbed at the officer for a second time and attempted to pull him forward out of the tunnel, according to the filing.
“Seconds later, as defendant Hughes was about to be pushed out of the mouth of the tunnel by the advancing officers, defendant Hughes struck Officer M.M. with his elbow once and then with his fist twice in a hammer-style punch,” according to the Probation Office’s pre-sentence report, which isn’t public but was cited in Hughes’ filing on Thursday. “Immediately after defendant Hughes assaulted him, Officer M.M. was pulled from the tunnel and assaulted by the mob on the Lower West Terrace before he was pulled out from the mob by other rioters.”
Besides Officer M.M., prosecutors say Hughes also assaulted people who tried to prevent rioters from smashing a window to an interior Senate office near the tunnel.
Prosecutors said Hughes changed clothes after President Trump’s Stop the Steal speech at The Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, before going to the Capitol in an attempt to conceal his identity.
But in the hearing on Monday, Hughes said he went back to his hotel to change clothes “because it was freezing.”
McCauley told Nichols that Hughes was wearing protective body armor under his shirt, based on video from the riot.
Shipley said he was “a little bit bothered” by that accusation because he said there was no evidence of it.
McCauley said Hughes tried to obstruct the investigation in several ways.
He said Hughes called an FBI task-force officer he knew after being questioned by other agents.
“He reached out to this person with the FBI,” said McCauley. “Hughes said to this person he did not go anywhere near the Capitol because things were crazy. This was clearly a lie.
“This is one of the most egregious cases of obstructing evidence that I have ever seen,” said McCauley.
Hughes has remained free since his arrest Aug. 30, 2023, in Fayetteville. When and where Hughes reports to prison will be determined later.
