New York Man Who Brought Knife to Jan. 6 Riot Pleads Guilty to a Felony

A New York man pleaded guilty on Friday to a felony charge of civil disorder for storming the U.S. Capitol while armed with a knife on Jan. 6, 2021, as supporters of former President Donald J. Trump sought to halt the certification of the 2020 presidential election results.

The man, Christopher D. Finney, 32, of Hopewell Junction, entered his plea before Judge Trevor N. McFadden of federal court in the District of Columbia, according to court documents.

Mr. Finney's sentencing is scheduled for January. His lawyer, Christopher Macchiaroli, said Mr. Finney "accepted full responsibility for his presence inside the U.S. Capitol" and looked forward to the "closure" he believed sentencing would bring.

Mr. Finney is among more than 1,500 people to be criminally charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot , in which supporters of Mr. Trump , including members of far-right groups , violently tried to stop Congress from certifying President Biden as the winner of the 2020 election.

Like many of those charged, Mr. Finney had traveled to Washington to attend a rally, according to court documents. A video Mr. Finney recorded before the rally showed him wearing plastic goggles and a protective plate-carrier vest, with a knife holstered to his hip and plastic flex cuffs in the vest's pouches, prosecutors said.

"We're going to storm the Capitol," Mr. Finney recorded himself saying, according to prosecutors. "We're going to make sure that this is done correct and that Donald Trump is still our president."

A short time later, prosecutors said, he joined the mob assaulting the Capitol, scaling a wall, breaching a police line and moving toward a doorway of the building's Senate wing. All the while, he was recording his movements, according to a Justice Department news release .

In one video, according to court documents, Mr. Finney can be seen yelling that rioters were being shot with paint balls and sprayed with mace.

"My face is on fire right now," he said in the video, according to court documents. He added: "It hurts so bad right now, but we're not going to stop. We're going to keep moving forward"

Eventually, Mr. Finney, wearing a mask with a skull design, entered the Senate wing only to flee through a broken window after encountering police officers, the news release said.

He re-entered the building and exited again before moving to a different area, where he joined other rioters who were pushing into a line of police officers, prosecutors said. He also recorded rioters brutally attacking law enforcement officers, and remained in a restricted section of the Capitol until after dark, according to court documents.

Mr. Finney was arrested after federal investigators found a "militia" group chat he belonged to while executing a warrant for iPhone and iCloud data belonging to another man charged in connection with the riot, Edward Jacob Lang , according to court documents.

Among the materials the investigators found were photos that Mr. Finney had taken at the riot and sent to Mr. Lang, according to court documents. Investigators brought images of Mr. Finney to the New York State Police, and a trooper recognized him as someone who had been arrested on suspicion of operating a motorcycle while intoxicated in 2022, the documents said.