A Jan. 6 Rioter Was Convicted Again. This Time For Trying To Murder FBI Agents.

Edward Kelley, 35, convicted earlier this month of assaulting police at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, has been found guilty again, this time for plotting to kill FBI agents who were investigating him.
Kelley, of Maryville, Tennessee, was found guilty in federal court on Wednesday of three counts including conspiracy to murder employees of the United States, solicitation to commit a crime of violence and influencing or retaliating against federal officials by threat.
Kelley was indicted alongside co-defendant and fellow Tennessean Austin Carter. According to a plea agreement, Carter admitted last year that he and Kelley planned on attacking an FBI field office in Knoxville and, later, created a list of 37 agents they wanted to murder.
Evidence at Kelley’s trial revealed the men discussed how they wanted to target their victims, including by using car bombs and by attaching explosives to drones.
The Justice Department noted in a statement Wednesday that both Kelley and Carter discussed how they could get to the FBI agents. The men discussed ambushing them at home or attacking them in public including at movie theaters.
In a transcript of a phone call Kelley made in December 2022 to an acquaintance who eventually became a witness for the FBI, Kelley described plans to start taking FBI agents out of their offices. Kelley described how he and Carter were coordinating and how they may need help to “recruit” other people to swarm and “take out” offices or agents.
“Every hit has to hurt,” Kelley said in the call.
The FBI first opened a probe into Kelley for his role in the Capitol attack in December 2021. He was arrested on those charges in May 2022. Prosecutors said Kelley was the fourth rioter who breached the Capitol. Video footage of him at the Capitol’s west front showed him getting into an altercation with a Capitol Police officer before he and two other men threw the officer into the ground.
He was also seen yanking a metal barricade back and forth with an officer grabbing onto one end. When he breached the Capitol, he came in through a window he smashed apart with a piece of wood. Once inside, he kicked open a Senate wing door, switched from wearing a gas mask to a red, white and blue medical mask, and confronted police including U.S. Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman. Goodman was responsible for leading rioters away from lawmakers who were in the Senate chamber on Jan. 6
Kelley was inside the Capitol for roughly 40 minutes. According to NBC News reporter Ryan Reilly, at Kelley’s bench trial for the Jan. 6 assault charges, evidence showed he may have been armed with a gun when he stormed the Capitol.
The Tennessee man had a holster hidden in his pants that appeared to show a “printing” of a gun but that was not proven conclusively at trial. It also was not necessary to prove in order to convict him of the assault charges.
In the Jan. 6 indictment, Kelley was also convicted of felony civil disorder and felony destruction of government property and eight misdemeanors.
For the plot to kill FBI agents, Kelley will be sentenced on May 7. He faces up to life in prison. He will be sentenced on April 7 for the Jan. 6 charges. Prosecutors have not yet submitted a recommendation for the length of that sentence.
He will remain in custody until sentencing. An attorney for Kelley did not immediately return a request for comment.
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As Donald Trump prepares to take the White House in January, hundreds of Jan. 6 cases are still active and more than 1,000 people have been prosecuted. Trump has dangled the idea of pardoning Jan. 6 offenders, but it is unclear whether that will mean blanket pardons or if each case will be weighed differently.
Since Trump’s election win in November, more Jan. 6 defendants have raised his promises of clemency to the judges overseeing their cases. As HuffPost reported, Jan. 6 defendant Chris Carnell told a judge he expected to be relieved of his charges “when the new administration takes office.” The judge overseeing Carnell’s case denied that request.
Just this week, during a hearing for a different Jan. 6 defendant in Washington, D.C., Politico reported that a Trump-appointed judge was outwardly dismayed at the idea of the president-elect issuing blanket pardons “or anything close” to it once in office, calling it “beyond frustrating and disappointing.”