Tennessee sheriff's deputy became a January 6 trophy in a lie-filled 'manifest injustice'

ROCHESTER, Minnesota — Colt McAbee keenly feels the irony of his living situation.

The former Georgia and Tennessee sheriff’s deputy and onetime prison guard now wears a different uniform from the ones he pinned his badge to for seven years — tan work clothes issued to inmates at the Federal Medical Center run by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

“It’s ironic I sit here on this side of the fence,” McAbee, 31, of Unionville, Tennessee, told a visitor in one of the prison’s sterile conference rooms.

'I already knew, "I’m going to lose. I’m going to prison."'

While the park-like surroundings on this serene campus look comforting, McAbee no longer has the freedom to enjoy them as he could have in the world he knew prior to Jan. 6, 2021.

“They sure gave him a lot of time,” a prison guard remarked on the walk to meet McAbee. He looked down and shook his head.

How did the well-regarded deputy trade a sheriff’s badge number for Inmate No. 60346-509 and become a major prize for the U.S. Department of Justice and its well-oiled Jan. 6 prosecution machine?

McAbee’s tale is a cautionary one in a post-truth society.

The ground that was trod to put him here in lockup appears to be scarred with twisted evidence, bald-faced lies, a jury not of his peers, and illicit prosecution evidence that might have tainted the jury before or during deliberations.

Most of all, it took an overzealous DOJ that was an active part in all of these things as it sought to put McAbee in prison for 14 years for criminality it ranked on par with attempted murder, kidnapping, voluntary manslaughter, and conspiracy to commit murder.

Colt McAbee was seriously injured in a vehicle accident on Dec. 27, 2020, in Eagleville, Tennessee. He went to the Jan. 6 protest with a broken right shoulder.Photo courtesy of Sarah McAbee

For more than 3.5 years, McAbee’s wife, Sarah, has had a front-row seat to what she considers a Jan. 6 horror show. The negative impact, she said, is staggering.

“Sitting through the trial and listening to distortions of the truth was an incredibly harrowing experience,” Sarah McAbee said. “There are simply no words to adequately express the frustration and disbelief one feels when witnessing prosecutorial and judicial misconduct unfold right before your eyes.”

Sarah McAbee said the lies were bad enough, but they were worsened by “watching the very principles of fairness and justice being compromised in real time.”

“The truth was blatantly disregarded, not because it was hidden but because it was inconvenient to the narrative the prosecution was intent on pushing,” she said. “It was disheartening to see the legal system, which is supposed to uphold justice, seemingly more focused on maintaining a false storyline rather than acknowledging the evidence that was clearly presented.”

McAbee said he knew that he would lose his case before it ever went to trial in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

He refused plea deals and insisted on going to trial. Not for himself, he said, but for a 34-year-old woman he will never meet this side of eternity: Rosanne M. Boyland of Kennesaw, Georgia. She died that day after he and others desperately tried to save her from the chaos, neglect, and shocking police violence that marred the end of her life.

“My training kicked in that day,” McAbee said, contrasting his actions with the dark, ominous story successfully spun by federal prosecutors. “I went to prison for helping.

“I already knew, ‘I’m going to lose. I’m going to prison,’” McAbee said without even a hint of regret. “I had to get the truth out.”

It has been a difficult road for McAbee in the more than four years since Jan. 6. Just a week before, he was almost killed in an accident that totaled his prized cardinal-red Dodge Ram pickup and left him with a broken right shoulder.

His life was threatened by a U.S. marshal while he was shackled at the ankles and pinioned at the wrists in Atlanta after his August 2021 arrest, he said.

The federal judge assigned to the case in Washington, D.C., called McAbee a terrorist in open court, long before any trial proceedings began. His partisanship against Jan. 6 defendants was a stark contrast to the local judge before whom McAbee first appeared in Nashville, Tenn. The D.C. judge was eventually reassigned from Jan. 6 cases.

The D.C.-based judge — Emmet G. Sullivan — overruled a Tennessee federal magistrate judge who had ordered McAbee released pending trial.

Now-former Sheriff's Deputy Ronald Colton McAbee with his wife, Sarah, on the way to high school prom (left), and at their Tennessee home.Photos courtesy of Sarah McAbee

Pretrial detention is supposed to be a last resort, saved for offenders whose alleged behavior is so extreme and violent that there is no other way to safeguard the community. The Tennessee judge, Jeffery Frensley, saw no evidence that then-Deputy McAbee was a threat to anyone.

Judge Sullivan thought differently, although he took 77 days to issue a written ruling on detention while McAbee remained behind bars. Sullivan claimed “clear and convincing evidence” that “no condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure the safety of the community.”

'So it appears clearly to this Court that the defendant is pulling the officer back into the crowd of other terrorists.'

McAbee sought reconsideration on Judge Sullivan’s detention order in 2022. Sullivan denied it on Sept. 3, 2022. This time it took the jurist 119 days to issue his written ruling.

Two days later, McAbee was assaulted with pepper spray by a guard at the District of Columbia jail, he claims. McAbee was walking from his cell to the nurse's medication cart when Lt. Crystal Lancaster told him to return to his cell and put on a COVID-19 mask. McAbee brushed past her to retrieve his medication. Lancaster then shouted that McAbee assaulted her. She allegedly blasted him in the face with pepper spray.

U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) grills U.S. Marshals Director Ronald Davis on the agency’s refusal to release bodycam footage of the pepper spray attack on Jan. 6 detainee Ronald Colton McAbee at a Capitol Hill hearing on Feb. 14, 2024.Emily Matthews/Rep. Troy Nehls

Guards put McAbee against a wall and were handcuffing him when Lancaster reached around his head and sprayed his face point-blank with more of the oleoresin capsicum, he said. Lancaster was not supposed to be in that section of the jail after previous disciplinary incidents with other detainees.

The attack was captured on bodycam and other security video, which the D.C. Department of Corrections and the U.S. Marshals have refused to turn over to congressional investigators even under threat of a subpoena from the House Committee on the Judiciary. McAbee and his wife, Sarah, are now seeking the video and other evidence as part of a federal civil rights lawsuit filed against Lancaster and the District of Columbia Department of Corrections.

Blaze News reached out to the House Committee on the Judiciary chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to ask if a subpoena will be issued for the bodycam and security video but did not receive a reply.

Truth hidden in chaos

To fully understand what McAbee found himself in the midst of on Jan. 6 requires a careful second-by-second study — of chaos.

It is not an easy task to find the truth. Video evidence is hard to follow. Bodycam audio is sometimes obscured by screams or muffled by clothing. At any one time, there were easily a dozen stories playing out in real time in various parts of the scene. Much of the narrative created by prosecutors reflects nothing short of rank dishonesty.

Defense attorney William Shipley, a 22-year federal prosecutor who represented McAbee for 18 months, called the case against his former client a “manifest injustice.”

Law-breaking occurred right next to efforts to de-escalate the crowd and make peace. At times, McAbee had men on either side committing criminal assaults against police while he tried to save someone. It was a raucous, hellish seven-minute span that cost McAbee nearly six years in federal prison.

The Lower West Terrace Tunnel was the scene of the worst violence on Jan. 6 — both from rioters and police. The tunnel mouth spewed forth a near-constant stream of evil for more than two hours.

Police retreated into the U.S. Capitol Lower West Terrace Tunnel after their defense line on the plaza below broke down about 2:35 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021.U.S. Capitol Police CCTV

Control of the tunnel see-sawed back and forth from just after 2:40 p.m., after the police lines collapsed on the West Plaza, until 5 p.m.

Police used dangerous gas on protesters inside the cramped tunnel space. They fired high-velocity pepper balls and other projectiles at eye level, mere feet from protesters. Protesters turned violent, hurling insults, water bottles, baseball bats, mop handles, sections of lumber, and even pieces of furniture back at police.

It was such a mess that it tempts even the non-conspiratorial mind to wonder if it was designed that way.

Police used the tunnel entrance for officers needing decontamination from pepper spray and tear gas used heavily on the crowds and returned in kind by rioters armed with super-potent bear spray. The entrance was never locked nor truly secured. A Capitol Police officer recorded on security video said the entrance could not be locked.

The tunnel became a retreat route after the 2:32 p.m. collapse of the police line on the West Plaza one level below. A series of misfires by police blew huge clouds of tear gas back into the faces of officers, many of whom had no safety gear for protection against the noxious gas.

More than 40 explosive munitions tossed into the crowd over the course of 75 minutes by police had an effect opposite to the designed purpose. The front lines of the massive crowd grew angrier with each explosion. Instead of dispersing, they pushed the police lines toward the Capitol.

McAbee wasn’t a front-row witness to the first 90 minutes of the tunnel siege. He had worked his way to just outside the archway at about 4:15 p.m. During the next 20 minutes, dozens of individual stories played out in surreal time. These dramas would be lost forever to fog-of-war recollections without a careful forensic evaluation of the evidence.

Wearing American flag sunglasses, Rosanne Boyland walks up the stairs to the Lower West Terrace and the tunnel leading into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.U.S. Department of Justice

Inside the tunnel, an MPD supervisor had allegedly just brutally beaten Victoria White in the head with his steel riot baton. Commander Jason Bagshaw punched the unarmed White dozens of times in the head and face, CCTV video showed.

White was subjected to an apparently illegal use of deadly force. She was spun about and thrown back and forth like a rag doll. During the attack, her jeans got pulled partway down. She eventually was pushed to the back of the tunnel and detained inside the Capitol. She remembers little of it.

During a lull in the violence, a new group of protesters sauntered into the tunnel archway at 4:18 p.m. The crowd included Boyland, who just missed witnessing the assault on White and other signs that might have warned her about the danger she was in.

'Someone’s being crushed! Get her up!'

At 4:20 p.m., police deployed some kind of gas in the tunnel, something use-of-force experts said was reckless and dangerous. Witnesses said the chemical fog consumed the oxygen in the air. Like fish out of water, the protesters could neither inhale nor exhale. Time seemed suspended. Terror quickly set in as each turned toward the tunnel mouth.

At the back of the tunnel, an officer began firing pepper balls into the panicked crowd. Some ricocheted off the walls, striking protesters — including Boyland. The force of the explosive projectile knocked her to the ground. She fell just outside the archway as people tripped and fell on top of her.

An aggressive push by police with shields drove the crowd out, causing dozens to tumble down the stairs like a waterfall. Bodies were piled three and four deep. McAbee stood some 15 feet to the side of the entry. He urgently signaled for officers to back off as they pushed protesters onto the pile of bodies.

Kim Sorgente, 54, of Pleasanton, Calif., begs police to help an unconscious Rosanne Boyland at the mouth of the U.S. Capitol Lower West Terrace Tunnel on Jan. 6, 2021. “Get her up, please! Save her life! Save her life, please!” Sorgente implored police.

The next five minutes sounded like the action on a battlefield, captured on the bodycam recordings of numerous MPD officers at the front of the tunnel. At 4:24:14, Boyland’s friend, Justin Winchell, sounded the first note of alarm after Boyland was crushed under the crowd: “Rosanne! Rosanne!” he cried.

“Oh, my God, you hurt me bad,” said Kim Sorgente, 54, a bearded California protester with a flashlight who began bleeding from the head after an apparent police baton strike. “Please! Please! I got hit in the head! I’m bleeding now!”

“There’s people trapped under here! There’s people trapped under here,” Winchell said to the police officers.

Sorgente cried out, “Someone’s being crushed! Get her up! Get her up! Get her up, please! Save her life! Save her life, please!”

Police continued to push protesters from the tunnel. They shoved several large men directly on top of Boyland.

“Please get her up! She’s gonna die,” Winchell shouted. “She’s gonna die! She’s gonna die! She’s dead! She’s dead!”

Lending aid on the battlefield

As pleas from bystanders to get medical help for Boyland were ignored, McAbee watched the furious, violent response from the crowd. Just before he stepped to the front, rioters threw flagpoles, water bottles, and pieces of lumber at police. One man wildly swung a baseball bat at officers. Another whapped police with a hockey stick attached to a flagpole.

Justin D. Jersey, 35, of Flint, Mich., wearing a distinctive University of Michigan “M” sweatshirt, jumped over the unconscious Boyland and attacked officers with flailing punches. Another rioter told him, “Knock their masks off!” He knocked MPD Officer Andrew Wayte to the ground and wrestled away his riot baton. Another man swung a flagpole at officers, while a third tried overhand strikes with a steel baton.

Just before McAbee stepped into the front of the crowd, rioter Logan James Barnhart, 44, of Holt, Mich., grabbed the back of the helmet worn by MPD Officer Blake Miller and dragged him headfirst down the steps into the crowd. A rioter threw an aluminum crutch toward the police that bounced off of Barnhart’s back and struck McAbee in the head, knocking off his hat.

'Don’t spray me, man! I’m not freaking hurting anybody!'

McAbee said he saw two people who needed help, the unconscious Boyland and Officer Wayte, who was down and about to be pulled by the foot toward the crowd by rioter Clayton Ray Mullins, 56, of Benton, Ky.

McAbee reached down and picked up a riot stick off the ground, held it for a few seconds, and dropped it. At 4:27 p.m., McAbee stepped in front of the tunnel entrance, right into a hornets' nest of crowd anger. As he stepped off the guardrail to the right of the arch, a large blue and white bullhorn sailed over his head and landed on the officers.

McAbee tried to alert officers that Wayte was down and needed assistance. He grabbed Wayte by his armored vest, turned him counter-clockwise, and pulled him about a foot toward the edge of the first step. McAbee first put his left knee between Wayte’s legs, preventing Mullins or other rioters from pulling him into the crowd. When McAbee stood up, he kept his foot in place to keep Wayte secure.

While Ronald Colton McAbee shouts at police to help an unconscious Rosanne Boyland, Clayton Ray Mullins yanks hard enough on the leg of Metropolitan Police Department Officer Andrew Wayte to cause McAbee and Wayte to slide down the steps at the U.S. Capitol on Jan,. 6, 2021.U.S. Department of Justice/Blaze News Graphic

Prosecutors claimed McAbee was trying to pull Wayte into the crowd, but video showed McAbee’s knee and foot actually stymied rioter Mullins, who was behind McAbee, continuing to pull hard on Wayte’s right leg.

McAbee pointed at Boyland just to Officer’s Wayte’s right. Her lips were blue. He leaned over and tried to reach her with his left hand. McAbee later said it was his duty to try to help someone who appeared near death and was being ignored by officers.

McAbee raised his left hand at the police as he leaned over Boyland, then pointed straight at a crouching MPD Officer Lila Morris and another officer standing over her. A man in a dark brown jacket, later identified as James Roe Cleary, 56, of Quaker, Conn., leaned over McAbee and picked a riot baton off the ground.

“Quit f**king trying to kill that girl!” McAbee shouted. “F**king stop! Get the —,” he said, apparently interrupted by an attack from MPD Officer Carter Moore.

Moore took his steel riot baton and cross-checked McAbee under his broken shoulder against his ribs. McAbee said he reacted instinctively due to the surprise and intense pain the blow caused. He swung and struck Moore in the face with an open left hand. McAbee pleaded guilty to slapping Moore before going to trial on his other charges.

Seconds later he said, “I need to f**king help! I’m trying to give f**king help! I know how to do that!”

'I’m trying to help you, man.'

Officer Divonnie Powell allegedly used an overhead swing and struck McAbee on the left forehead. McAbee said the officer looked at him with a big grin on her face after landing the blow. Using a steel baton to strike the head is considered deadly force. McAbee said he still has an indentation in his skull from the strike.

As McAbee took steps back after the blow to the head, Michael John Lopatic Sr., 58, charged up the steps and began attacking Officer Moore, knocking off Moore’s body cam in the process. Lopatic, of Lancaster, Pa., was later charged with more than a dozen Jan. 6 criminal counts. He died on July 3, 2022, before his case came to trial.

Protester Luke Coffee, 45, of Dallas, stepped into the breach to McAbee’s left and stood just over the lifeless Boyland. Coffee held up his right hand and implored the officers, “Stop!” He shouted “stop!” at least a dozen times while he stood in front of police.

Tennessee Sheriff's Deputy Colt McAbee and protester Luke Coffee at the police line outside the Lower West Terrace Tunnel at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. U.S. Capitol Police CCTV

Coffee was wearing a cowboy hat, face paint, and a camo-pattern jacket because he had been filing Jan. 6 video reports for comedian Alex Stein on his then-podcast, “Conspiracy Castle.” Coffee was a regular on the podcast as the Texas cowboy character Skylar T. Jennings Jr., “the last of a dying breed.” Coffee said the Holy Spirit prompted him to go to the Lower West Terrace Tunnel and “stand in the gap” between police and the crowd.

Officer Morris, who had picked up a craggy walking stick taken from a rioter, allegedly wound up the wooden stick and swung it at Coffee. She struck him mid-arm. Coffee was being doused in the face with several streams of police pepper spray. Morris apparently wound up for another slam but missed Coffee entirely.

'Do not pull that gun!'

Morris then inexplicably turned her fury on the unconscious Boyland, allegedly using the hardened stick to beat her in the head, face, and ribs. Morris appeared to try to deliver a fourth blow to Boyland but lost her grip on the stick, sending it bouncing off the archway to the ground six feet away.

The assault that wasn’t

McAbee gave a shove to Lopatic, who was still attacking Officer Moore. Just after blurting out another expletive, McAbee lost his balance, and the most controversial part of the case began to play out.

Until this point, McAbee’s knee, foot, and leg were preventing Officer Wayte from being pulled into the crowd. But Mullins was persistent, exerting the kind of force usually seen in tug-of-war competitions. At 4:28 p.m., Mullins pulled Wayte’s foot and leg so hard that it knocked McAbee off his feet, and he landed on top of the officer. The two men went careening down the steps as Mullins kept pulling.

Prosecutors repeatedly claimed throughout the case that McAbee dragged Officer Wayte down the steps. Video clearly shows, however, that Mullins pulled both men down the steps. Mullins denied pulling Wayte and McAbee down the stairs. The other pulls on Wayte’s foot and leg were to help him by getting him away from McAbee, Mullins claimed in a sentencing memo in his own Jan. 6 criminal case.

Prosecutors also claimed McAbee picked Wayte up by the vest and “slammed” him to the ground. That does not appear ever to have happened.

Despite claims by prosecutors, McAbee did not lie on top of Wayte, pin him down, or crush him. McAbee shouted at bystanders, who tried to attack Wayte and called McAbee a “f**king traitor” for helping the officer.

Two voices in the crowd that gathered around those steps could leave historians to wonder if McAbee's defense of Officer Wayte had even more significance than was apparent to his defense team.

As McAbee supported himself on his hands while Wayte lay below him, a bystander shouted, “Do not pull that gun!” according to Officer Wayte's bodycam. McAbee told Blaze News he heard a bystander say, “Get his gun!” That’s why he shouted at the crowd, “No! Quit!”

McAbee rolled Wayte onto his side. “Stop!” the officer said. “Ready? You ready?” McAbee asked, according to Wayte’s bodycam. Seconds later Wayte said, “Let go of me, man.” McAbee replied, “I’m trying to help you, man.”

Clayton Ray Mullins repeatedly tried to pull Metropolitan Police Department Officer Andrew Wayte down the steps at the Lower West Terrace Tunnel, but Colt McAbee's well-placed foot stymied most of the attempts.Metropolitan Police Department Bodycam

Wayte then uttered a phrase that indicated he did not consider McAbee an attacker.

“I know. I know. Help me up.”

McAbee helped him up. Wayte stumbled his way past the police line into the tunnel. Out of breath, he urgently said, “I need through!”

As soon as he helped Wayte to his feet, McAbee moved to the area where Boyland was dragged by bystanders after she was allegedly beaten by Officer Morris.

While a man in a black helmet and jacket began cardiopulmonary resuscitation, McAbee loosened the belt on Boyland’s jeans to check for a femoral artery pulse. A third bystander cut away Boyland’s sweatshirt to make CPR easier.

McAbee grabbed a first aid bag set down near Boyland’s head. He opened the kit and looked for a CPR mask so he could start rescue breathing. Boyland’s face had a purple cast, so the men knew she needed to get into the Capitol for advanced lifesaving care by paramedics or other first responders.

McAbee and five other men carried Boyland back up the steps to set her in front of the police line and urged officers to help her. “She’s f**king dying!” a man screamed as the rescuers set Boyland down. McAbee pointed into the tunnel and shouted, “Are you f**king serious? Get a medic!”

'Hey, thank you, man. Appreciate you.'

The bystander who did CPR on Boyland on the steps continued his efforts. “Compressions!” he shouted. “I need compressions!” McAbee knelt down to take over.

McAbee was able to do three chest compressions before a protester in a gas mask pulled him away. At 4:31 p.m., another bystander grabbed Boyland’s arms and helped MPD Officer Isaac Huff drag Boyland through the tunnel into the basement of the Capitol.

Ronald Colton McAbee helps Metropolitan Police Department Officer Andrew Wayte to his feet after the men were pulled down the steps by rioter Clayton Mullins at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. U.S. Department of Justice/Graphic by Blaze News

Paramedics, the attending doctor in the emergency room, and the Washington, D.C., medical examiner all failed to document Boyland’s injuries after she was apparently beaten on the patio outside the tunnel by Officer Morris. High-definition video shot by Goldcrest Productions during CPR done by bystanders shows blood coming from Boyland’s nose and eyes. She had a large contusion on one shoulder and an injury above her right eye.

McAbee tried to stand up but had to lean against the archway wall. The intense experience was catching up with him. He had trouble breathing, and his broken shoulder hurt so much that his right arm hung next to him like a dead tree limb. With the help of the man in the gas mask, McAbee got to his feet and leaned on the steel railing in the tunnel for support.

Crowd anger amped up greatly after Boyland was pulled into the Capitol. Two flagpoles sailed just over McAbee’s head as the crowd hurled abuse at the police line. “Turn in your f**king badges, you sorry motherf**kers!” shouted Christopher D. Maurer, 47, of Bangor, Maine, who accented his derision with a constant middle finger. “Shame on you!” another man intoned.

McAbee came face to face with MPD Officer Steven Sajumon. “Thank you,” the officer said. McAbee tried to respond but could not get any words out. He held up his left hand and shook his head.

A section of a riot stick whipped by Maurer against the archway bounced off and landed in between McAbee and Sajumon. Seconds later, a black stereo speaker came sailing from out in the crowd and landed with a thud mere inches from McAbee’s head, Sajumon's bodycam showed.

“Hey, thank you, man,” Sajumon said to McAbee. “Appreciate you.”

Ronald Colton McAbee does CPR compressions on a pulse-less Rosanne Boyland, 34, of Kennesaw, Ga., outside the Lower West Terrace Tunnel at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Metropolitan Police Department body cam

“Can I get somewhere behind the line?” McAbee asked. Pointing at other officers to his left, McAbee shouted, “Don’t spray me, man! I’m not freaking hurting anybody!”

At that moment, rioter Jonathan Daniel Pollock reportedly charged the police line with a stolen riot shield and tried pressing his way past Officer Sajumon. Pollock later apparently went on the lam for three years after the FBI put him on its Jan. 6 most-wanted list.

Pollock was accused of jumping over police barricades on the West Plaza and dragging an MPD officer down the steps and kneeing him near the face. He was also charged with punching and choking other officers on the West Plaza just after 2 p.m.

McAbee tried to slip past Pollock’s shield and get into the tunnel. “You good, man?” Officer Sajumon asked. “I got you, all right?”

“Let me through, man!” McAbee implored, to which Sajumon replied, “I got you, all right?”

The officer asked McAbee if Boyland was his wife. “No, but I think I just broke my f**king shoulder.”

“Now calm and chill out, we got you, man,” Sajumon told him.

Going on trial

As McAbee’s trial approached in September 2023, he decided to plead guilty to one count of assaulting or obstructing Officer Moore. McAbee was not allowed by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras to use self-defense as a defense in the contact with Officer Moore, so McAbee decided to enter a guilty plea. It was not part of a plea deal.

McAbee’s trial opened on Oct. 2, 2023, with jury selection. The DOJ opened its case against him on Oct. 4. The trial closed on Oct. 11, with the D.C. jury finding McAbee guilty of all five remaining charges.

The trial and the many filings by the DOJ were marred by false information by prosecutors. As often as not, the DOJ claimed McAbee was wearing “brass-knuckle gloves” or “steel-reinforced gloves,” when they were actually cheap $20 knockoffs from Amazon.com with plastic reinforcements on the knuckles and fingers. There was no metal.

In her closing statement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexandra Foster referred to them as “steel outdoor reinforced brass motorcycle knuckle gloves.”

Prosecutors said the gloves and the alleged ballistic vest McAbee wore with a “Sheriff” patch and a logo from the Three Percenters showed he went to Washington, D.C., with the intention to fight. McAbee said he was not a member of the Three Percenters, a group that believes just 3% of American colonists defeated the British in the Revolutionary War.

Ronald Colton McAbee is struck in the head by a riot stick apparently wielded by Metropolitan Police Department Officer Divonnie Powell at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Metropolitan Police Department body cam/Sarah McAbee

Foster made an interesting reference to the British monarchy the colonists defeated to allow the formation of the United States.

“The defendant equated himself with the American revolutionaries in a war against the British, the established government,” Foster said.

It was not clear whether she intended to suggest the defeat of the imperial British and the establishment of America were somehow bad things.

Foster said of 4:27 p.m., “He’s here at the front of the tunnel, grabbing Officer Wayte and pulling him down the stairs.” She said McAbee “very intentionally pulls Officer Wayte into the riot.”

'He chose to do all of this so that he could have his moment of glory assaulting the police.'

Foster claimed that after Logan Barnhart dragged Officer Miller face-down into the crowd, it was McAbee’s fault that police could not rescue Miller because McAbee had stepped into the center of the police line. She alleged McAbee positioned himself intentionally to prevent a rescue of Officer Miller.

Video shows that the steps were largely clear when McAbee stepped from the side into the center of the police line. McAbee said his interaction with Officer Moore was due to the pain of being struck just below his broken shoulder, but Foster said McAbee’s intention was to “stop him from moving forward to get to the downed officer.”

“The defendant pulls Wayte by his leg into the riot,” she said.

McAbee didn’t pull Wayte into the crowd or into the riot. He repositioned him and slid his body about one foot and placed his foot in between the officer’s legs to prevent him from being pulled into the crowd. Prosecutors claimed the placement of McAbee’s foot was a coincidence.

“I don’t understand how they can say I pulled that guy down the stairs,” McAbee told Blaze News, saying his intention was quite the opposite.

“I’m not letting this guy get dragged into it,” McAbee said.

Foster claimed McAbee engaged in a tug-of-war over Wayte with an MPD officer who tried to pull Wayte back toward the tunnel. Video shows McAbee did not touch Wayte again after the officer tried unsuccessfully to pull Wayte to his feet. At the time, McAbee was pointing at Boyland, trying to alert officers to her dire situation.

Foster told jurors that McAbee struck Officer Moore with a clenched fist, as in a punch. “Right here you can see his hand fisted up, about to hit Officer Moore,” she said. Bodycam video shows, however, that McAbee had an open palm when he struck Moore. It was more of a sweeping motion, as in a slap.

Foster suggested McAbee should have tried to rescue Officer Miller, who was pulled down the stairs before McAbee stepped to the center of the police line. The steps remained clear while Miller was being beaten, had a dozen or more civil disturbance officers in their turtle suits chosen to move down some 15 feet of stairs to extract their colleague.

Federal prosecutors said this selfie from Colt McAbee’s cell phone showed he was proud of the protests and riots at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.U.S. Department of Justice

Prosecutors did use Wayte’s body cam in their arguments against McAbee, but they never played the audio, Sarah McAbee said. The soundtrack showed that McAbee protected Wayte and didn’t make a move until Wayte indicated he was ready to get up. It also showed Wayte acknowledging that McAbee was helping him.

Prosecutors did not call to the stand Officer Sajumon, who witnessed all of the events and told McAbee, “Appreciate you.” The defense team put Sajumon on the stand.

Foster then claimed, “McAbee picks Wayte up by the vest and slams him to the ground,” causing the officer to emit an “audible grunt.” Wayte’s body cam does not show that he was lifted up and slammed. Sarah McAbee said this accusation was never part of the case, but it was slipped in during closing arguments.

Prosecutors took a dramatic flair in their closing statement, suggesting that McAbee enjoyed assaulting police officers. “And he chose to do all of this so that he could have his moment of glory assaulting the police officers in front of this heaving crowd,” Foster said.

Then, in a statement that left Sarah McAbee dumbfounded, Foster admitted that McAbee might have been trying to assist Officer Wayte after all.

McAbee “has this ‘oh-crap’ realization that he is assaulting an officer in the middle of a riot and decides to change course,” Foster suggested. “And maybe at that point he’s trying to help Wayte.”

'I lost everything, but I gained so much more.'

“At best,” Foster said, McAbee simply gets off Wayte and “just stops assaulting him.” McAbee “doesn’t help him up,” she said. “He doesn’t give him a hand.”

The Goldcrest Productions video showed that McAbee not only gave a hand but supported Wayte’s arm as he struggled to get up. A video from another angle shows Wayte standing up and heading for the tunnel.

Early Oct. 11, the second day of jury deliberations, a controversy erupted that led defense attorney Benjamin Schiffelbein to move for a mistrial. The jury sent a note to Judge Contreras that asked why the binder full of McAbee’s text messages was different from the digital information provided to the jury.

The binder with more than 70 text messages from McAbee’s phone was not supposed to be in the jury room. It did not include redactions made to the messages, including some material that was overly prejudicial to McAbee.

Judge Contreras denied the motion for mistrial and told the jurors to simply ignore anything they might have read in the binder. “Just put that out of your mind and don’t rely on that information at all,” he said, according to the trial transcript.

The jury came back with its guilty verdicts 90 minutes later.

A crushing sentence

At the sentencing hearing on Feb. 29, 2024, McAbee poured his heart out in his statement to the court, talking about his terrible conditions growing up, being abandoned by both parents, and feeling what became an intense, lifelong desire to protect and help others.

He described his sadness and regret that Boyland did not survive. He second-guessed every action, wondering what might have been if he had arrived sooner.

“What if I was up there sooner and saw Rosanne?” McAbee told Blaze News. “Could I have saved her? I feel like I failed in saving her life.”

McAbee said he was very deflated that after the long hearing and his heartfelt statements to the court, Judge Contreras read from what appeared to be remarks written before the hearing. The bottom line was 70 months in federal prison.

“It didn’t matter what I said.”

McAbee said the 70-month sentence was particularly painful because the rioters around him got lenient sentences by comparison.

Mullins received a 30-month sentence. Jersey, who knocked Officer Wayte to the ground, is serving 51 months. Barnhart, who dragged Officer Miller down the steps face-first by his helmet, drew a 36-month sentence. Mason Courson, who beat Officer Miller with a baton after the officer was dragged down the steps and later pushed him back into the crowd, got a 57-month prison term.

“They really wanted me,” McAbee said.

McAbee credits his wife, Sarah, with keeping him going, being both his support and champion.

Colt McAbee with his wife, Sarah, during pre-Jan. 6 times. “My lifeline is my wife,” he said.Photo courtesy of Sarah McAbee

“I’m very proud of her. I fall in love with her more and more every day,” he said. “She’s not a victim. She refuses to be a victim.”

McAbee has adjusted to a calmer life in the Rochester prison than he faced while in the District of Columbia jail. He arrived here on April 24, 2024, and has an estimated release date of May 8, 2026. For his own peace of mind, McAbee said he has always made the assumption that no presidential pardon is coming.

The anger that McAbee felt after arriving here has faded. He said he puts efforts into improving himself, fostering a new sense of Christian faith and leading Bible study sessions. He has concluded that if ever in a situation like Jan. 6 again, he would not hesitate to offer help to police officers or strangers.

And while the pain and anxiety across more than four years have been a struggle, added to his tragic upbringing, McAbee said he has a renewed sense of purpose.

“I lost everything, but I gained so much more.”

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