A heavy machine operator whose bare-chested modeling landed him on the covers of romance novels was sentenced on Thursday to three years in prison for assaulting police officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the Justice Department said.
The man, Logan James Barnhart, 41, of Holt, Mich., was involved in one of the most notorious clashes in the Capitol riot that highlighted the unhinged, chaotic violence that day.
Mr. Barnhart was part of a mob that confronted officers at the archway leading into the Capitol building and that dragged one of the officers down the steps into a violent crowd, where the officer was further beaten with a flagpole and a baton, federal prosecutors said in a statement.
With the help of online crowdsourcing efforts, Mr. Barnhart, who once graced the covers of romance books like “Stepbrother UnSEALed: A Bad Boy Military Romance,” was arrested in August 2021.
Mr. Barnhart was sentenced to 36 months in prison and 36 months of supervised release after pleading guilty in September to assaulting law enforcement officers with a dangerous weapon.
He was also ordered to pay a fine of $3,688 and restitution of $2,000.
His lawyer, Cara Kurtz Halverson, a federal public defender, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Friday.
“The way I was acting seems so foreign to me,” Mr. Barnhart told the U.S. district judge, Rudolph Contreras, The Associated Press reported.
More than 1,000 people from nearly all 50 states have been arrested in connection with crimes related to the Capitol riot, according to the Justice Department. Among the longest sentences was a 10-year term handed down in September to a retired New York City police officer who swung a metal flagpole at a Washington officer.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Barnhart, who had also trained as a bodybuilder, was at the Capitol to support President Donald J. Trump, who had made unfounded assertions that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
When Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter about the need for a strong turnout at the Jan. 6 rally, Mr. Barnhart tweeted in response, “I’ll be there.”
Around 4:47 p.m. that day, another rioter, Jack Wade Whitton, a fencing contractor from Georgia who also pleaded guilty in September 2022 to assaulting officers, began hitting a Metropolitan Police Department officer with a crutch, prosecutors said.
Mr. Barnhart, Mr. Whitton and a third rioter dragged the officer down the steps of the building “in a prone position” and into a crowd that also beat him, the Justice Department said. Mr. Barnhart dragged that officer by the neck of his ballistic vest.
“As a result of this attack,” prosecutors said, “the officer sustained physical injuries, including bruising and abrasions.”
Minutes later, Mr. Barnhart joined other rioters who were slamming riot shields into a line of police officers, prosecutors said.
“Barnhart pushed other rioters from behind, supporting them and propelling them forward into the line of officers,” the Justice Department said. “He then approached the line of officers and struck at them with the base of a flagpole.”
