MINT HILL, N.C. — The Department of Justice says a North Carolina man is facing felony charges, accused of assaulting law enforcement officers during the breach of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
36-year-old David Paul Daniel, who lives in the Charlotte suburb of Mint Hill, was arrested Thursday according to a news release from the department. He is charged with felony offenses of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers along with civil disorder. Daniel is also charged with several misdemeanors.
The DOJ says Daniel was among a group of rioters that breached the Senate Wing Door near the Northwest Courtyard a second time that day, just before 3 p.m. Daniel allegedly joined another rioter in what the department described as a violent push against a barricaded door and the police officers trying to keep them closed.
After this push, the DOJ said Daniel and the others forced open the door before being sprayed with a chemical irritant. He then reportedly climbed over a pile of broken furniture and out of a broken door to get outside. The department said Daniel spent several minutes outside before re-entering and heading to the Crypt. He eventually left shortly after 3 p.m. that day.
Since the day of the riot, the DOJ said more than 1,200 people have been charged across the country for crimes tied to the breach as Congress worked to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. More than 400 of those people were charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement, a felony offense.
Daniel will make an initial appearance in federal court in the Western District of North Carolina. The charges were filed in a complaint from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, which is prosecuting the case.
Daniel is not the only person from the Charlotte area to face prosecution for the riot; a Kannapolis man who was deemed by the DOJ as the second rioter to enter the Capitol building was arrested in August 2023. A Catawba County couple was sentenced in May 2023, while a Cherryville man pleaded guilty in February 2023. One of the key lieutenants of the extremist Proud Boys group, who was from Belmont, also pleaded guilty in 2022 and later testified against the group's former leader and other lieutenants.