Judge convicts Minneapolis man of attacking cops during Capitol seige

Published 5:07 pm Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By Matt Sepic, Minnesota Public Radio News

A federal judge in Washington on Wednesday found a Minneapolis man guilty of assaulting police and other crimes during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Prosecutors said Brian Christopher Mock, 44, could be seen on video outside the Capitol on that day shoving two police officers to the ground and kicking one of them.

Email newsletter signup

Mock waived his right to a jury trial, and opted instead to have Judge James Boasberg decide the case. The judge convicted Mock on all 11 counts, which also include felony obstruction of an official proceeding.

Mock was among a dozen Minnesotans charged in connection with former President Donald Trump’s last-ditch effort to overturn the 2020 election by attempting to stop the counting of electoral votes.

Three Minnesotans have pleaded guilty. So far, Mock is the only Minnesota defendant to go to trial, and the only one to have spent time in pretrial detention.

Boasberg released Mock from jail with GPS monitoring last year and is allowing him to remain free until his sentencing hearing, which the judge set for Oct. 10

NBC News reported in June that Mock, who acted as his own attorney during part of the trial, called his son as a witness. A.J. Mock, who had turned his father in to the FBI, was initially listed as a government witness, but prosecutors didn’t call him.

On cross examination, A.J. Mock told the court that he he loves his father and did not want to see him go to prison, but that his father was like a broken record when talking about the 2020 election.