What weapons and improvised tools used by rioters on Jan. 6 led to criminal convictions for assaulting officers?
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Executive summary
Convictions for assaulting officers on Jan. 6 have explicitly tied violent acts to a mix of conventional weapons and improvised tools — flagpoles, hatchets, skateboards and metal bats, riot shields turned into battering rams and even firearms brought onto the grounds — with prosecutors relying on video, bodycam and physical evidence to prove “dangerous weapon” assaults [1] [2] [3]. Reporting and court records show those items produced some of the most serious sentences, though sources do not offer a single exhaustive inventory of every tool used or charged across the entire case list [1] [2] [4].
1. Flagpoles and poles: blunt instruments that produced long sentences
Federal prosecutors successfully argued that rioters who wielded flagpoles and similar poles inflicted serious injury and met the statute’s dangerous-weapon threshold, resulting in convictions and heavy sentences such as a California man who received 20 years after repeatedly attacking officers with flagpoles and “other makeshift weapons” [1] [5]. Courts treated those long poles not as symbolic items but as functioning weapons when used to strike, shove or lever police lines, and judges cited video and officer testimony in sentencing [1].
2. Hatchets, bats and skateboards: edged and blunt tools captured on camera
Video and courtroom evidence tied hatchets and blunt instruments to multiple convictions; for example, footage of Shane Jenkins smashing a window with a hatchet was used in his prosecution for assaulting police and destroying property [2]. Reporting also cites rioters with skateboards and metal bats — items used in prior violent incidents and invoked by prosecutors as part of dangerous conduct on Jan. 6 — underscoring how ordinary objects became prosecutable weapons when used to strike people [1].
3. Shields, shields-as-weapons, and other items seized from law enforcement
Court filings describe rioters turning a U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) riot shield into an instrument of assault; one defendant was convicted after using a USCP shield against officers inside the Tunnel, an attack documented in a Justice Department sentencing release that resulted in more than five years behind bars for the defendant involved [3]. That case illustrates a common prosecutorial theory: when a defensive piece of equipment is repurposed to batter officers, it becomes a dangerous weapon in the eyes of the law [3].
4. Firearms, illicit weapons and corroborating evidence
Beyond improvised blunt and edged items, courts prosecuted defendants who arrived with or brought firearms and other illegal weapons onto Capitol grounds; separate reporting notes defendants were convicted for bringing a loaded handgun onto Capitol grounds and for other weapons offenses tied to assaults [2] [4]. Prosecutors frequently relied on integrated evidence — video, body-worn camera footage and witness statements — to link a specific object in a rioter’s hands to injuries or the breaking of police lines [2] [6].
5. Sentencing, political backlash and limits of the public record
The use of these tools produced some of the stiffest penalties handed down — including multi‑year terms and, in a few cases, sentences exceeding a decade — and those punishments have become focal points in debates over pardons and political messaging, with some pardoned rioters later calling for reprisals and the White House issuing pardons that affected many Jan. 6 convictions [1] [7] [8]. Reporting shows officers and prosecutors relied on detailed footage to secure convictions [2] [6], but available sources do not present a definitive, comprehensive list of every weapon or improvised tool that led to convictions across all Jan. 6 cases — rather, they document multiple high-profile examples and legal theories the DOJ used to categorize improvised items as “dangerous weapons” [1] [4].