Federal prosecutors say Peter Schwartz of Uniontown was an aggressor who attacked police with a chair and pepper spray during the Capitol insurrection and shouldn't be allowed to raise any claims that he was defending himself.
Mr. Schwartz, who is from Kentucky but living and working in Uniontown, is accused of storming the Capitol with his wife in support of Donald Trump's repeated election lies.
The FBI said he hurled a chair at a line officers at the beginning of a skirmish, stole a bag of pepper spray from police and used it on them and later bragged about his actions online in texts that agents recovered from his phone.
Mr. Schwartz is awaiting trial along with two other men also accused of initiating violence against police. His wife, Shelly Stallings, is charged with them in the case but has indicated she will plead guilty.
Some Capitol rioters have tried to raise the self-defense claim in justifying violence, but prosecutors say if Mr. Schwartz or the other two, Marcus Maly and Jeffrey Brown, try that route the judge should block it because it isn't true.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jocelyn Bond said in court papers Tuesday that Mr. Schwartz and the others started the fight and video proves it.
She said at no point did any police apply force to any of the men and that Mr. Schwartz was the aggressor in throwing a chair and spraying cops.
"Indeed, the video evidence shows that the officers on the receiving end of the chair-throw or pepper spray never once touched the defendants," she said. "It was the defendants who initiated violence, each in different ways, with respect to each assault."
She said Mr. Schwartz and Mr. Maly sprayed police in the West Plaza and later all three entered the Lower West Terrace and worked together to spray officers.
Ms. Bond said the video doesn't clearly show Mr. Schwartz throwing the chair but he was standing in the area from where it was thrown and in texts he said he did it.
"I threw the first chair at the cops … then when everybody charged, I grabbed their duffel bags full of mace," he wrote. "I kept some and passed them out to the crowd … lol."
Ms. Bond said the defendants cannot claim self-defense based on any of the evidence. But if the judge doesn't bar that defense, she said he should order the defendants to present pre-trial statements to support their claims so he can decide.
Mr. Schwartz is among two dozen people from the Pittsburgh region charged in the insurrection.
The FBI arrested him in February 2021 in Uniontown and seized his phone. Mr. Schwartz has challenged the legality of that seizure, but the FBI said the phone contained a photo of Mr. Schwartz at the Capitol and the boastful text messages.
First Published: September 27, 2022, 8:01 p.m.
