WASHINGTON — A man known for publicly harassing police officers who testified in Jan. 6 cases has been arrested in connection with his own involvement with the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Tommy Tatum, who has also provided trial testimony on behalf of a Jan. 6 defendant, was arrested in Mississippi on Wednesday, according to court records. He is charged with civil disorder by obstructing, impeding, or interfering with law enforcement officers engaged in official duties, a felony, as well as misdemeanor counts.
No attorney for Tatum was listed in the court records.
Tatum had been a frequent presence at vigils outside the jail in Washington, where some Jan. 6 defendants were being held. NBC News has reported that he also harassed officers who were testifying during Capitol attack trials.
Last year, Tatum was a witness for Brian Mock, a Jan. 6 defendant who assaulted police officers and then represented himself at trial. Mock was convicted and sentenced to 33 months in federal prison in February and is incarcerated in Minnesota, according to federal prison records.
Tatum was on the west front of the U.S. Capitol and on the front lines as the pro-Trump mob chased down outnumbered police officers on Jan. 6. He eventually made his way to the lower west tunnel, where some of the worst violence of the day took place.
“Take their helmets! Take their helmets! Take their helmets,” Tatum said in a video he posted of his activities on Jan. 6. In an interview with NBC News in 2022, Tatum said he yelled that because law enforcement officers "were spraying us with that deadly gas, and in my mind, I’m thinking if they take their helmets off maybe they’ll stop spraying.”
The FBI affidavit against Tatum says that he "attended multiple federal trials of January 6 defendants and was included on defense witness lists for multiple trials" and that the video he confirmed he recorded shows him "repeatedly berating and taunting uniformed police officers" as the police line collapsed.
"Don't run back, just stand your ground, take a breath, take a breath, regroup," Tatum said in the video as officers were being chased. "They're scared as s--- right now."
"Yeah, run, b------! We got you motherf------ now! Woo! Woo! Woo!" Tatum said in the video.
The FBI said Tatum also approached a police line with a flagpole extended forward and near officers' chest levels; body camera video doesn't show whether the end of the flagpole made contact with any officers. Once he was inside the tunnel, according to the FBI, Tatum was a part of a crowd that made "repeated collective efforts to surge forward" against officers.
More than 1,400 people have been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, and prosecutors have secured convictions against over 1,000 defendants. Over 540 defendants have been sentenced to periods of incarceration, from a few days behind bars to 22 years in federal prison for a Proud Boys leader convicted of seditious conspiracy.
