On Jan. 6, 2021, Daniel Egtvedt heard then-President Donald Trump say that if he didn’t “fight like hell,” he was “not going to have a country anymore.”
Coming from his home in western Garrett County to “stop the steal,” Egtvedt joined the crowd of marchers moving from the White House to the U.S. Capitol. There, he watched the “unfolding chaos,” prosecutors said, as rioters scaled walls, waved flags and edged closer to the building, where Congress was set to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory.
At the Senate Wing doors, where the first of more than 2,000 attackers breached the Capitol, Egtvedt was pepper-sprayed by officers through a broken window. He kept pushing, eventually overrunning a police line and moving deeper into the building.
Inside, he screamed in the faces of officers, calling them “traitors,” and gave an interview to a far-right content creator. When authorities attempted to usher him out, Egtvedt became combative before collapsing under the weight of at least four Capitol Police officers.
For his actions Jan. 6, Egtvedt was convicted on seven charges in March 2023 and sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison. He’s been held in a federal penitentiary for over a year while part of his conviction has moved through the appeals process. On Friday, that effort was aided by a Supreme Court decision limiting the use of a felony obstruction law against Capitol rioters.
In a 6-3 decision, the justices ruled that the felony charge of obstructing an official proceeding could not be a “one-size-fits-all” statute and must include evidence that a defendant tried to tamper with or destroy documents. The charge itself, which was brought against Trump and hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants, was enacted in 2002 after it was discovered the Enron energy company engaged in massive fraud along its path to bankruptcy.
The Supreme Court’s decision, which sent the criminal case of an off-duty police officer from Pennsylvania back to lower courts, may be used by Trump’s lawyers in another attempt to throw out the former president’s own Jan. 6 prosecution. Soon after the ruling, Trump posted, “BIG WIN!” on Truth Social.
Federal prosecutors, including United States Attorney General Merrick Garland, said the decision would not have an impact on their Capitol cases.
According to the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, of the more than 1,400 people it arraigned in connection to the riot, more than 82% were never charged with or convicted of the obstruction law. Of the cases that did end with a guilty verdict, there were none in which a defendant was only charged with obstruction and only 52 where the defendant was convicted of that and no other felony.
Since Jan. 6, 2021, 35 Maryland residents have been charged for their alleged involvement in the attack. Of those, nine were charged with the challenged statute and only four have been convicted of it. The other five are in different stages of the judicial process.
The case against Elias Costianes Jr., of Nottingham, is still active. Emanuel Jackson, of Capitol Heights, is scheduled for an Oct. 18 plea hearing. After a trial, Nicholas Rodean, of Frederick, was found guilty of other counts, but not obstruction, while the charge was not included in pleas from Rodney Milstreed, of Finksburg, and David Blair, of Clarksburg.
Egtvedt is one of four Maryland defendants whose case may be affected, and the sentence possibly reduced by the Supreme Court’s recent decision.
Matthew Miller, a Cooksville man, was 22 when he pleaded guilty to two felonies: obstruction of an official proceeding, and assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers. Miller stormed the Capitol draped in a Confederate flag, prosecutors said, charging into the building through the Lower West Terrace, where some of the day’s worst violence took place. He was sentenced in May 2022 to nearly three years in prison.
Two of the four Marylanders convicted of obstructing an official proceeding were convicted only on that charge.
Joshua Pruitt, a member of the Proud Boys from Silver Spring, was sentenced to over 4 1/2 years in prison after pleading guilty to that one count. As Pruitt pushed through the Capitol, he nearly encountered Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, forcing the politician and his security team in the other direction.
John Andries, a Piney Point resident, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison in early 2023 after breaking into the Capitol, alongside Egtvedt. He resisted officers attempting to remove him and was eventually dragged from the building.
Andries and Pruitt were two of only a small number of cases solely tied to the obstruction charge. It was unclear Tuesday what effect the Supreme Court decision would have on their cases. Andries is now out of prison and in the middle of a three-year period of supervised release.
In an email to The Capital, Daniel Ball, a spokesperson for the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, said he could not speculate on any action the courts may make.
“We’re still assessing the impact of the Fischer decision,” he said.
Egtvedt appealed his obstruction conviction soon after it was rendered. The case has sat with the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia since November, awaiting a decision from the Supreme Court.
F. Clinton Broden, Egtvedt’s attorney, said Tuesday that he now expects the Appeals Court to remand Egtvedt’s case to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for a lighter sentence.
“I believe they will act expeditiously,” Broden said of the Appeals Court, “but ultimately it’s their timetable.”
