Sandy MaloneNew Windsor, NY – A retired New York Police Department (NYPD) officer who worked high-level security details for the city has been charged with attacking a U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) officer with a pipe during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6.
Retired NYPD Officer Thomas Webster surrendered to authorities at the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Hudson Valley Office on Monday, WNBC reported.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Webster was due in federal court in White Plains on Tuesday.
Sources told WNBC that before he retired from NYPD, Officer Webster was assigned to work perimeter security at City Hall and at Gracie Mansion, the official residence of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The FBI had released images of Webster at the Capitol riot in January and asked the public to help identify him.
#EyeGouger is wanted for assaulting a police officer and trying to gouge out his eye. If you know this person call the FBI’s Tipline at 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324) @DCPoliceDept @FBIWFOpic.twitter.com/cwnADdlaqn
— Cleavon MD (@Cleavon_MD) January 30, 2021
Webster has been charged in connection with his activities at that U.S. Capitol complex on Jan. 6, but officials haven’t said what he was charged with specifically.
Officials have said the charges were in connection with a pipe attack on a member of the U.S. Capitol Police force, WNBC reported.
Webster’s arrest came just days after President Joe Biden blamed the growth of white supremacy on U.S. military veterans and retired police officers.
President Biden was asked during the Feb. 16 town hall in Milwaukee how his administration would address the threat to the United States from “Americans who embrace white supremacy and conspiracies that align with it.”
“It is complex, it’s wide-ranging and it’s real,” the President answered. “You may — I got involved in politics to begin with because of civil rights and opposition to white supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan.”
He made that claim even though Vice President Kamala Harris pointed out his poor record on civil rights during the Presidential debates.
“And the most dangerous people in America continue to exist. That is the greatest threat to terror in America: domestic terror,” President Biden continued.
The President said he would make sure that the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division “focused heavily” on those people.
“And I would make sure that we, in fact, focus on how to deal with the rise of white supremacy,” he said.
Then President Biden took aim at the very same Americans who dedicated their lives to keeping the country safe.
“And you see what’s happening — and the studies that are beginning to be done, maybe at your university as well — about the impact of former military, former police officers, on the growth of white supremacy in some of these groups,” the President said.
“You may remember in one of my debates with the former president, I asked him to condemn the Proud Boys. He wouldn’t do it. He said, ‘Stand by. Stand ready.’ Or whatever the phrasing exactly was,” he recalled.
President Biden says White supremacists are the greatest domestic terror threat in the US: "It's complex, it's wide-ranging and it's real." #BidenTownHall https://t.co/P1CFPNzLBl pic.twitter.com/dygwnLuXe1
— CNN (@CNN) February 17, 2021
“It is a bane on our existence. It has always been. As Lincoln said, ‘We have to appeal to our better angels,’” President Biden said.
“And these guys are not — and women — are, in fact, demented. They are dangerous people,” he added.
Holly Matkin
