Global Courant
Two men who were on active duty in the Marine Corps when they stormed the US Capitol pleaded guilty to riot-related criminal charges Monday.
Joshua Abate and Dodge Dale Hellonen are expected to be sentenced in September by US District Judge Ana Reyes. Both pleaded guilty to a felony of parading, demonstrating or picketing at a Capitol building, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
Many Capitol rioters are military veterans, but only a few were actively serving in the armed forces when they joined a mob attack on Jan. 6, 2021.
A third active duty Marine, Micah Coomer, was also charged with Abate and Hellonen. Coomer pleaded guilty same felony charge in May and is expected to be sentenced by Reyes on August 30.
All three men face up to six months in prison.
On May 19, the Marines were still on duty. No additional information was available on Monday.
David Dischley, an attorney for Abate, declined to comment on his client’s guilty plea. An assistant district attorney representing Hellonen did not immediately respond to an email asking for comment.
Authorities arrested the three men in January: Abate in Fort Meade, Maryland; Coomer in Oceanside, California; and Hellonen in Jacksonville, North Carolina.
Witnesses stationed with Coomer at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia and with Hellonen at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina identified them in videos of the Jan. 6 riot, according to the FBI. A third witness — also a Marine — identified Abate from footage taken at the Capitol, the FBI said.
During a June 2022 security clearance, Abate said he and two “friends” had walked through the Capitol on Jan. 6 “trying not to get hit with tear gas,” according to an FBI special agent.
“Abate also admitted that he heard how the event was being portrayed negatively and decided he shouldn’t tell anyone about entering the US Capitol Building,” the agent wrote in an affidavit.
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After the riot, Coomer posted photos to Instagram with the caption “Glad to be (a part) of history.” The angles of the photos and the caption indicated he had been at the Capitol on Jan. 6, the FBI said. Coomer’s phone number in his military personal file matched the Instagram account.
Coomer rode to Washington from his military post in Virginia on the morning of January 6. He attended then-President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally with Abate and Hellonen before they entered the Capitol. In the Rotunda, they placed a red “Make America Great Again” hat on a statute before taking pictures of it, prosecutors said. The three men spent nearly an hour in the Capitol before leaving.
Less than a month after the riot, Coomer told another Instagram user that he believed “everything in this country is corrupt.”
“We really need another reboot. Waiting for the boogaloo,” he wrote, according to the FBI.
When the other user asked what that term meant, Coomer wrote, “Civil War 2.”
Supporters of the “Boogaloo” movement use the term as slang for a second civil war or collapse of civilization. They often appear at protests, armed with guns and wearing Hawaiian shirts under body armor.
More than 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes for their behavior at the Capitol on January 6. About 600 of them have pleaded guilty, mostly to offenses that carry a maximum prison sentence of six months or a year.
___ Associated Press writer Lolita Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.
