(RepublicanInformer.com)- New filings have shown that a member of the Proud Boys got dangerously close to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer during the Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021.
Joshua Pruitt, a 40-year-old member of the Proud Boys, will face sentencing in his criminal case this Friday. Back in June, he plead guilty to obstruction of an official proceeding as part of the insurrection.
New court filings are showing that Pruitt got very close to Schumer in the Capitol building on January 6. Prosecutors submitted these new filings over the weekend.
According to CNN, which reviewed the documents, a special agent with the Capitol Police — identified by the initials M.L. — detailed a situation in which Pruitt ended up coming face to face with the then-minority leader in the Senate as he was trying to be evacuated from the area.
In the filing, M.L. said he pulled Schumer out of his chair on the floor of the Senate, as people were trying to evacuate the room. They were all headed to the Capitol’s basement en route to getting out of the building altogether.
M.L. said Schumer and the members of his security detail were “crouch[ing] behind the recessed walls for cover” as they waited for the elevator that would take them to a car that would eventually allow them escape.
At that time, Pruitt approached the detail. A sergeant in the detail, identified in the filing as K.F., made eye contact with the member of the Proud Boys, yelling “evac, evac, evac.”
Schumer then described that as they were fleeing from the area, he could hear Pruitt “getting louder behind him [and that] he felt as though they were being chased.”
The group was able to eventually get away from Pruitt, and the member of the Proud Boys walked away from where they were.
Mitch McConnell, who was the majority leader in the Senate at the time, approached those same doors, but turned back around, which prevented him from coming into contact with Pruitt.
According to M.L., there were only four or five seconds between Pruitt coming into direct contact with Schumer on January 6, which could have ended up in a very tragic incident.
The entire ordeal was detailed in Pruitt’s statement of offense as well. Pruitt said he left the Capitol building after police notified people that shots were being fired during the riot.
As he was inside the Capitol building, Pruitt threw a sign that read “quiet please” across the atrium. He also threw a chair in the Capitol Visitors’ Center and was present when rioters confronted officers with the Capitol Police inside the Capitol building.
M.L. filed a victim impact statement for the case in which he said his family feared that he could’ve died that day. As he wrote in the statement:
“My wife and daughter understand that their husband and father could have died that day, like some of my colleagues. They will never rest easy whenever I go to work again.
Every day I enter the beacon of our country, the U.S. Capitol, I relive the memories of that day, and none are as impactful as the moments I saw Mr. Pruitt approaching us with the intent to inflict harm to the Majority Leader. It was only due to our teams preplanning of alternate evacuations procedures and quick actions that this impending meeting did not result in blood shed or serious bodily injury.”
