Photo via the Federal Bureau of Investigation
March 2, 2021, 11:04 am
A participant in the attempted coup on behalf of Donald Trump in January has been arrested after investigators found text messages from him boasting that he would dress in all black “like ANTIFA” for the riot.
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He claimed that this would let him get away with his crimes, but as it turns out, that only works if everyone else does it and also you don’t brag about it to friends and family beforehand.
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Photos from the Capitol show him in a camouflage jacket and MAGA hat, but underneath he appears to be wearing black clothing.
“I’m dressing in all black,” he texted on January 5. “I’ll look just like ANTIFA. I’ll get away with anything.”
The man, William Robert Norwood III, allegedly attacked the cops while in his antifa cosplay and then later blamed the violence at the Capitol that day on anti-fascist activists. He also later bragged about fighting with four cops and how he “got a nice helmet and body armor off a cop for God’s sake and I disarmed him.”
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It was such a load that in Norwood’s family group text, one of his siblings called him out for his blatant hypocrisy, which can be seen in the photos in the federal criminal complaint against him.
“Robbie literally bragged about pretending to be this mysterious Antifa yall go on and on about, and then you say no no REAL antifa did this,” the sibling wrote. “Listen to yourselves.”
Norwood also boasted that his antifa dress-up “worked,” saying that he “got away with things that others were shot or arrested for.” Unfortunately for him, he was incorrect. After getting arrested in South Carolina on February 25, the rioter had a different tune on his tongue for the federal investigators, claiming that he sent those text messages about beating up police to “sound tough.”
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“Norwood repeatedly claimed that he only attempted to help law enforcement, not hurt them,” the complaint reads.
He is being charged with trespassing, disorderly conduct, and obstruction charges, though specific charges for attacking police officers are noticeably absent. He is, however, being charged with theft for the police equipment he stole after he told them that he took it from a pile of helmets and body armor someone found rather than taking them off of actual cops.
“NORWOOD alleged that after leaving the U.S. Capitol building, an unknown person took a police vest from a pile of police equipment that was lying on the ground outside the west side of the Capitol building and put it on NORWOOD,” the complaint explains. “NORWOOD then admitted that he put on a police helmet from the pile of equipment before walking away from the Capitol and reuniting with his wife.”
*First Published: March 2, 2021, 11:04 am
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