Jan. 6 rioter who assaulted police charged with burglary near Richmond
A Fairfax County man who assaulted police at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and smashed the glass pane through which Ashli Babbitt climbed before she was fatally shot, has been arrested again outside of Richmond. Zachary J. Alam is accused of breaking into a home this month while the residents were there. He appears to be the first Capitol rioter arrested on new charges after President Donald Trump granted clemency to the roughly 1,600 people charged for their roles in the insurrection.
Alam, 33, of Centreville, spent more than four years in jail after assaulting police at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and in November he was sentenced to an eight-year term after a jury convicted him of seven felonies and three misdemeanors, including assaulting police officers and obstructing police during a civil disorder. At his sentencing last year, two days after Trump's election victory, Alam demanded a pardon and reparations.
'I will not accept a second-class pardon,' Alam said. 'I want a full pardon with all the benefits that come with it, including full compensation.'
U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich cited Alam's 'lack of remorse' in giving him one of the longest Jan. 6-related sentences. 'The actions of Mr. Alam on Jan. 6 were among the most violent and aggressive of the Jan. 6 defendants,' she said, adding that officers at the Capitol recalled him because 'he was by far the loudest, the most combative and the most violent of the Jan. 6 rioters.'
Alam was fully pardoned on Jan. 20 and released from jail.
Henrico County police said they arrested Alam late on May 9, in a neighborhood just east of the Richmond city limits. Homeowners told officers that around 8:30 p.m., an unknown man entered their house on Arthurwood Place through the back door and took several items. The residents saw the man and asked him to leave.
Police said they found the man in a nearby neighborhood. Alam was arrested and charged with felony residential burglary and misdemeanor vandalism. He was being held Monday in the Henrico County jail, jail officials said. Alam has prior convictions for auto theft, leaving the scene of an accident, petty larceny and drunken driving, according to federal prosecutors, who argued for a lengthy prison sentence after his Jan. 6-related conviction.
Alam's attorney in the burglary and his Jan. 6 attorney both did not return messages seeking comment Monday.
Alam was one of the first rioters to enter the Capitol, prosecutors said, and was at the front of a mob that broke through a police line inside the building. He then went to the Speaker's Lobby, where video showed him throwing himself against officers guarding the door, punching glass door panels behind the officers, and then using a helmet to cover his fist and completely dislodge the right-side panel. When Babbitt climbed into the space created by Alam, she was shot once by a Capitol Police officer.
The shooting was ruled justified, but Babbitt's family sued and has apparently negotiated a $5 million settlement with the government, The Washington Post reported Monday.
'I know that breaking windows is against the law,' Alam said at his sentencing. 'But I believed in my heart I was doing the right thing. Sometimes you have to break the rules to do what's right. … Some J6ers did violence, but only because they thought they were saving the country in the process.'
Alam is not the first Capitol riot defendant to be accused of breaking the law after the president issued the pardons on Jan. 20, but he is the first to be arrested. Six days after the mass clemency order was issued, Jan. 6 defendant Matthew Huttle was pulled over by a Jasper County sheriff's deputy in northwest Indiana, got into a scuffle with the deputy and was fatally shot.
Video released after the incident showed that the deputy informed Huttle he was being arrested as a habitual traffic violator, a felony, because he had no valid license and multiple prior convictions. 'I stormed the Capitol. I'm waiting on my pardon,' Huttle told the deputy, 'I can't really afford to get into any trouble right now.'
Huttle ran to his car, and the deputy followed. As the deputy reached for him, Huttle could be heard on the video saying, 'I'm shooting myself.' The deputy stepped back and fired multiple shots. Prosecutors said Huttle had a loaded pistol in his minivan, and they ruled the shooting justified.
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