Maryland police officer convicted of tossing smoke bomb at police during Capitol riot

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Maryland police officer was convicted on Friday of charges that he joined a mob’s Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and hurled a smoke bomb and other objects at police officers guarding a tunnel entrance.

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden heard two days of trial testimony without a jury this week before he found Montgomery County Police Officer Justin Lee guilty of two felonies and three misdemeanors. The judge, who also acquitted Lee of two other misdemeanors, is scheduled to sentence him on Nov. 22.

Lee ignited and threw a smoke bomb into the tunnel entrance on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace, where a mob of rioters attacked a group of outnumbered police officers. The device struck a police officer’s riot shield and filled the mouth of the tunnel with a large plume of smoke, prosecutors said.

“No police officer should have to endure these attacks and provocations,” McFadden said.

Lee, who remains free until his sentencing, didn’t show any obvious reaction as the judge read aloud his verdict. His attorney declined to comment after the hearing.

After Lee’s arrest last October, the police department said it had suspended him without pay and was “taking steps to terminate his employment.” A department spokesperson said in an email on Thursday that Lee remains suspended without pay.

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“The actions of one individual do not define the entire department,” the department said in a statement last year.

Lee, of Rockville, Maryland, applied to be a Montgomery County police officer in July 2021 — six months after the riot. The department said it hired Lee approximately one year after the riot and didn’t know about his alleged involvement in the attack until July 2023, when it learned he was under FBI investigation.

Videos show Lee wearing a Maryland flag-patterned gaiter over his face outside the Capitol. He also wore a military-style medical bag attached to his clothes.

Lee waved at other rioters to overtake police as the mob attacked a line of officers on the West Plaza, according to prosecutors. Moving to the Lower West Terrace, Lee tossed the smoke bomb and three other “rock-like objects” at officers guarding the tunnel, the judge found.

“Lee later joined other rioters in ‘spotlighting’ officers inside the tunnel with a flashlight until officers were able to retake the middle landing of the Lower West Terrace,” prosecutors wrote.

Defense attorney Terrell Roberts III said the assault charge in this case only applies to acts involving physical contact with the assault victim. Robert argued that the riot shield prevented physical contact between the smoking device and the officer’s body.

“It would be bad policy to send a man to prison where the evidence fails to prove each element of an offense,” he wrote before the trial.

Lee was indicted on seven charges. The judge convicted him of two felonies — interfering with police during a civil disorder and assaulting, resisting or impeding officers — and misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and trespassing.

But the judge also acquitted him of two misdemeanor charges of engaging in physical violence. McFadden ruled that prosecutors didn’t present sufficient evidence that Lee committed an act of physical violence.

Lee had been on administrative leave since he shot and killed a man suspected of stabbing four people on July 22, 2023, according to the police department. The department said Lee hadn’t been performing a police officer’s duties since the shooting, but his unpaid suspension stemmed from his arrest on Jan. 6 charges.

On the day of last year’s shooting, officers were responding to calls for a stabbing at a thrift store in Silver Spring, Maryland, when they confronted a suspect holding a butcher’s knife. The suspect ignored officers’ commands to drop the knife and lunged at Lee before the officer shot him, police said in a news release.

One of the four stabbing victims was critically injured, police said. A police official told reporters that all of the victims were expected to survive the attacks, which he described as “unprovoked.”