Man with loaded gun, fake inauguration pass arrested at DC checkpoint
A Virginia man packing a Glock handgun and more than 500 rounds of ammo was busted trying to drive through a US Capitol checkpoint using bogus inaugural credentials, officials said Saturday.
Wesley Allen Beeler of Front Royal, Va., was taken into custody at 6:30 p.m. Friday after he tried to drive his white Ford pickup truck through the checkpoint, court papers show.
The non-government-issued pass caught the attention of wary Capitol Police cops, who have been on high alert since Jan. 6, when rioters lay siege to a Capitol now bracing for Joe Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday.
Beeler, 31, was told to pull over away from the checkpoint — and when he did, the cops noticed the pickup had “several firearm-related decals” stuck to the rear windshield, court papers said.
“Assault Life,” read one decal, which sported an image of a rifle.
“If they come for your guns Give ‘Em your bullets first,” read another decal, the court papers said.
Asked by cops if he had anything in the vehicle that could hurt them, Beeler allegedly ‘fessed right up to the Glock under his center armrest.
He was then taken out of the truck and handcuffed.
More police arrived to process the truck — and allegedly found the handgun just where Beeler said it would be.
It held a magazine loaded “with 16 rounds of 9mm ammunition” plus another round in its chamber, police said.
“Additionally, search of [Beeler’s] vehicle led to the recovery of 509 9MM rounds of hollow point & ball ammunition as well as twenty-one 12 guage shotgun shells in a bandolier located in plain sight in the rear cargo area of the vehicle,” court papers released Saturday revealed.
The checkpoint was just a seven minute drive northeast of the Capitol.
Beeler was charged in D.C. Superior Court with carrying a pistol without a license, possession of an unregistered firearm, and possession of unregistered ammunition.
In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Beeler insisted he is actually a security contractor for MVP Protective Services, and had wandered into the checkpoint because he was lost.
“I’m a guy trying to do his job and I honestly made a mistake forgetting my firearm in the truck and not turning around,” he told the outlet.
In another arrest announced Saturday, the feds nabbed far-right Internet personality Tom Gionet — who calls himself “Baked Alaska” — for having allegedly live-streaming his half-hour romp through the rioter-packed building.
“Patriots are in control!” he screamed along the way, the feds said. “Unleash the Kraken!”
Later in his livestream, Gionet — a one time commentator for Buzzfeed — picks up a telephone inside a room in the Capitol.
“America First is inevitable,” he screams into the phone — apparently to no one. “F— Globalists, let’s go! We ain’t leaving this bitch.”
Busted in Nashville was Jack Jesse Griffith, 25, who the feds said Instagrammed himself pumping his fist in the air inside the so-called Capitol Crypt, one floor below the Rotunda.
“Trump was our greatest champion and it still wasn’t enough,” Griffith allegedly posted alongside a crying emoji.
Meanwhile, a DC judge ordered Richard Barnett — the 60 -year-old accused rioter photographed resting his boot on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk — remain in jail pending trial.
Also, the feds walked back their previous day’s claim — from a filing case against bison-horned, so-called “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley — that they have “strong evidence” some rioters wanted to “capture saying in a filing that investigators have not uncovered direct evidence of a plot to assassinate officials.
There is no direct evidence as yet of such a plot, the feds said in a DC filing Friday.
Additional reporting by Larry Celona
via: https://nypost.com/2021/01/16/man-with-gun-fake-inauguration-pass-arrested-at-dc-checkpoint/
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