Man charged with assaulting officers in Jan. 6 Capitol riot after USA TODAY investigation

A man identified in a USA TODAY investigation of Jan. 6 Capitol rioters who have never been arrested has now been taken into federal custody and faces charges including deadly assaults on police officers, the Justice Department announced Friday.

Curtis Logan Tate, 32, of Jefferson, Indiana, was arrested Thursday in North Carolina, authorities said, and also faces other felony and misdemeanor charges including destruction of government property.

As USA TODAY reported in March, volunteer online sleuths, some of whom have become known as “Sedition Hunters,” said they had identified more than 100 people who were at the Capitol riot, using publicly available photographs and video of the insurrection, combined with facial recognition software.  But they said despite providing extensive information to the FBI, those people had never been arrested or charged.

USA TODAY investigated their claims and confirmed the identity of several riot participants by reviewing online evidence and contacting some of the suspects. One of them was Tate – who the online sleuths said they first identified more than a year ago.

The Justice Department’s charging documents note that Tate was identified for USA TODAY’s investigation and cite the quote Tate gave in a USA TODAY interview:

“I would never hurt an officer. I come from a military background, I'm very respectful of our military and police,” Tate said. “I know I didn't hurt anybody – I'm not speaking here bold as brass, because you never know what can happen – but I've never, ever once hurt, or put my hands on an officer.”

Court documents tell a different story.

Our investigation: After Jan. 6 riot, hundreds of identifiable people remain free

Striking an officer on the head with a metal baton

The 20-page complaint against Tate accuses him of engaging in several different acts of violence and destruction on Jan. 6, including striking at least one Capitol police officer with a retractable metal baton.

Tate can be seen in videos swinging the baton and charging toward police officers, prosecutors claim. He can also be seen repeatedly striking one officer’s helmet with the baton, the complaint states.

That officer “believed he could have been killed by the strikes dealt by TATE if he had not been wearing a metal riot helmet,” the complaint reads.

Tate was also seen in videos throwing a black speaker box and a table leg with a screw protruding from it through a window of the Capitol building, prosecutors allege.

Capitol riot arrests: See whose been charged across the U.S.

That window “was completely broken as a result of damage caused by Tate and others,” the complaint states.

One officer recounted that “the speaker box hit him in the head and, he believes, led to a concussion,” the complaint reads.

Bragging about his actions

Tate was identified to prosecutors by a “tipster,” according to the complaint, who provided investigators with social media videos posted by Tate and others. In those and other videos, Tate can be seen boasting about his actions and screaming at other protesters to attack the Capitol, the complaint states.

In March, photographs of Tate could be seen on the FBI’s website listing suspects wanted in connection with the insurrection. He told USA TODAY he didn’t know why his photograph was on the site.

“If I’m on that list for the rest of my life, I guess I'll be there,” Tate said. “But I never did it. So I'm not going to live the rest of my life in fear.”

Tate told the FBI a similar story when investigators interviewed him on Jan. 13, 2021, according to the charging documents. But after viewing the subsequent evidence against him, prosecutors concluded he wasn’t being truthful about his actions.

Many Jan. 6 suspects still at large

While federal officials have publicized the prosecution of nearly 1,000 people in the Jan. 6 investigation, far less focus has been placed on the hundreds more who are wanted but have never been charged.

The FBI publicizes photos and video screen-grabs of riot participants, describing those people as wanted for federal crimes. But unlike a traditional “wanted” list, the FBI’s list doesn’t identify the suspects by name; it publishes photos and video screen-grabs that can be used to identify them.

That, in turn, helped spur the army of volunteer sleuths who use online images and research tools to identify rioters.

“The amount of information the Sedition Hunters give the FBI – it’s a portfolio of information,” Forrest Rogers, a volunteer investigator who has been researching the Jan. 6 riot for two years, told USA TODAY. “We give them everything but the longitude and latitude coordinates of their house.”

USA TODAY corroborated that research identifying six of those people, and interviewed two of them. In addition to Tate, another man, Gregory Yetman, acknowledged  to USA TODAY that he was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, but said he did nothing wrong that day.

Photographs and video from the day appear to show Yetman picking up a large canister of pepper spray from the ground and firing a jet of spray at protesters and police officers.

According to the Justice Department’s online database, Yetman has not yet been charged.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Curtis Logan Tate charged in Capitol raid after USA TODAY report