A participant in the January 6 attack pardoned by Donald Trump was recently arrested for burglary and vandalism in Virginia in what is believed to be the first incidence of new charges for a person who took part in the 2021 US Capitol insurrection.
Zachary Alam received one of the longest prison sentences, eight years, for his part in the violence committed in Washington DC by Trump supporters attempting to keep him in office after his 2020 election defeat by Joe Biden.
The judge at his sentencing noted that officers called him “by far the loudest, the most combative and the most violent of the rioters”.
Alam, 33, spent almost four years in jail and then was unconditionally pardoned along with about 1,500 others by Trump on the first day of his second presidency in January.
Officers from Henrico county arrested him on 9 May in a neighborhood just outside Richmond after residents said an unknown man had entered their house and taken several items, the Washington Post reported.
Alam, who has previous convictions including auto theft and driving under the influence, was found in a nearby neighborhood and arrested and charged with felony residential burglary and misdemeanor vandalism, the newspaper said.
Alam never showed any remorse for his actions on 6 January 2021, for which he was convicted of eight felonies, including assaulting law enforcement, and three misdemeanors.
According to witnesses, he broke the glass of a door in the speaker’s lobby through which fellow rioter Ashli Babbitt climbed before she was fatally shot by an armed officer defending the House chambers. The Trump administration reportedly reached a $5m settlement this week with Babbitt’s family to settle a wrongful death lawsuit.
At Alam’s trial, prosecutors described how he was among the first of a mob of rioters to enter the Capitol building from its west lawn and spent at least 30 minutes inside, during which he hurled items at police from a balcony.
He used a helmet to shatter three glass panes in the door through which Babbitt was shot and left the area urging other rioters to return with guns.
Alam was arrested by FBI agents in Denver, Pennsylvania, on 30 January 2021 and remained incarcerated through his November 2024 trial and sentencing, until his pardon in January.
“I know that breaking windows is against the law. But I believed in my heart I was doing the right thing. Sometimes you have to break the rules to do what’s right,” Alam said at his sentencing hearing, the Post reported.
The newspaper said Alam’s lawyers did not respond to a request for comment.
