WASHINGTON — On Friday night, a Fox News guest who represents several Jan. 6 defendants sent a series of tweets suggesting that an undercover officer was one of the people who sprayed bear spray at officers at the US Capitol.
In fact, he was a Trump supporter who had already been arrested and charged. On Monday morning he confessed his crime.
Edward Rodriguez, 28, of Brooklyn, New York, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of assaulting, resisting, or causing bodily injury to certain officers. Online sleuths who identified Rodriguez in early 2021 gave him the nickname “Suit Maker” because he wore a suit and “masted” a line of officers.
In a nearly empty courtroom a few blocks from the Capitol, Assistant US Attorney Will Wiedman laid out facts the government said it could prove in court: that Rodriquez traveled to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania by train , and joined a charter bus that arrived hours before President Donald Trump’s speech at midnight on January 6, 2021. It can be proven, Wiedman said, that while he was on the restricted grounds of the US Capitol, Rodriquez used bear attack spray to directly attack three police officers and indirectly attack four others and An officer who was in contact lenses at the time had to be assisted by a bystander due to the heavy, intense pain he was in.
The government said that Rodríguez gave at least two media interviews on 6 January, wearing the same outfit he wore when he attacked the seven police officers under attack from the mob.
“Here in America, we fight back. We will never surrender to dictatorship, corruption, communism or socialism. We the people will never tolerate their bullies—,” Rodriguez said in an interview, according to Gov.
The government pointed to an inquiry conducted by Rodriguez on Google after the attack: “What effect does bear spray have on humans?”
Rodriguez, who was lounging on the podium wearing a bright blue suit, nearly reneged on his plea agreement after the judge read the felony consequences. He adamantly stated that he was first hit with pepper spray. He acknowledged that he harmed the officers but quickly noted that it happened “absolutely immediately after I sprayed.” He said he found bear spray on the ground.
After Rodriguez took a break to speak with his attorney, US District Judge Dabney L. Fredericks, appointed by Trump in 2017, eventually accepted the plea. Frederick carried out the sentence on 18 July.
Leaving the courthouse, Rodriguez was a bit more shy than on January 6, when she tried to block the view of her face by using her gloved hand when a reporter took pictures of her leaving. He took an Uber ride with his lawyer.
Online, however, some now think that Suit Maker is a fed up. Joseph McBride, a New York attorney representing several Jan. 6 defendants, tweeted Friday about a Washington police document apparently turned up in the search that said undercover officers were required to wear rainbow colors on Jan. 6. Should have worn a wristband. He then posted an image of a man pepper spraying officers wearing a wristband.
“It’s probably just a coincidence…” McBride wrote.
Trump-supporting social media users ate it up, thinking an undercover officer had pepper-sprayed fellow officers. “Wow! Caught red handed!!!” wrote a Twitter user. Another wrote, “If this picture and documents are genuine, then this is proof of one police officer spraying some poison on another police officer.” “These would be metaphorical ‘smoking gun’ level evidence of a Fed resurgence.” Another user agreed: It was a “smoking gun” that showed “wristbands identifying J6 government instigators.”
Some basic details don’t match: The wristband was on the assailant’s right hand, not his left, as described in the Washington police document. It wasn’t even rainbow colored; It appeared red, white and blue. Most important, the owner of that wristband had already been identified, arrested and charged: Video of those officers spraying showed that the wristband belonged to Rodriguez. He had to plead guilty within 72 hours of McBride’s tweet.
McBride, who recently went on Fox News to discuss the out-of-context run by Tucker Carlson, declined to say that at the time of his tweet, the man with the wristband had already been identified. and will soon enter a guilty plea.
McBride told NBC News on Tuesday, “I’m not going to comment on that.” “Look, you know, we have a job to do. There’s an information war.”
McBride said he would not knowingly lie to the public. He said on Tuesday, “I would never knowingly put any wrong information in front of the public, I do not do that. And it is true.”
Nearly 1,000 members of the pro-Trump mob have been charged in connection with the January 6 attack.
