A Lebanon man accused of attacking three police officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, siege at the U.S. Capitol is scheduled to be tried next month before a federal judge in Washington, D.C.
Kyle Fitzsimons, 38, last month waived his right to a jury trial on 11 charges related to the violent protest he took part in two weeks before the inauguration of President Joe Biden.
Fitzsimons became the first Mainer to be charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot. He is now one of four men with Maine ties of the nearly 900 defendants who have been charged in what the Department of Justice is calling the “Capitol breach cases.”
Another Maine defendant, Nicholas Patrick Hendrix of Gorham, pleaded guilty last month to one charge of violent entry, disorderly conduct and demonstrating, parading or picketing in a Capitol building.
Fitzsimons has been held without bail since his arrest on Feb. 4, 2021, at his home in Maine.
His trial is set for Aug. 16 before U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras, who was appointed to the federal bench in March 2012 by President Barack Obama.
Fitzsimons allegedly twice charged at a line of Metropolitan Police Department and U.S. Capitol Police officers who managed to fight him off. One officer struck Fitzsimons on the head, breaking the skin. Fitzsimons posted photos of himself on social media with blood on his head and face, according to court documents.
The Lebanon man, who until his arrest worked as a butcher at a southern Maine supermarket, was part of a group that forced its way past police and into the Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of results in the November 2020 presidential election. Fitzsimons never made it inside but, wearing a butcher’s jacket and carrying an unstrung bow, he and others overcame officers in a police line.
Fitzsimons allegedly grabbed an officer’s shoulder and tried to pull him into the crowd. That caused him to fall, and the officer struck Fitzsimons in the head several times to free himself from the Maine man’s grip.
After being struck by a baton, Fitzsimons moved and charged at the line of officers, according to court documents. He allegedly grabbed an officer’s gas mask and pulled it to the side before another person behind Fitzsimons covered the officer in pepper spray. Details about the alleged assault on a third officer have not been released.
In the years before his arrest, Fitzsimons espoused white supremacist rhetoric at the State House in Augusta and on social media, threatened U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree if she voted to impeach former President Donald Trump, and had two “unnerving” encounters with Maine Rep. Michele Meyer, D-Eliot.
He told lawmakers in 2018 that he had moved to Maine to escape “multicultural hellholes,” and that immigrants were “killing off yankee New England culture.”
If convicted, Fitzsimons faces up to 20 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000 on the most serious charges of inflicting bodily harm on federal police officers.