We can’t really call certain Capitol rioters our “favorites” as that would imply we actually like them. We don’t. They’re all shit both in their politics and by and large in their personal lives. But some of their cases we gave more attention to than others in our coverage for one reason or another.
Matthew Beddingfield of North Carolina is one of them and we’re almost sad to see him go, as his Thursday guilty plea on a single count of felony assault for attacking cops – for which he faces at least eight years – during the insurrection is the penultimate chapter in Beddingfield’s debased saga.
In 2019 at age 17, Beddingfield was charged with attempted murder after shooting another teenager in the head in Walmart parking lot during a dispute over an unspecified matter which we would feel comfortable betting was drugs because what the hell else would they be doing in a Walmart parking lot. The other teen apparently survived and it was probably a graze wound given that Beddingfield’s bond, initially set at $1 million, was bumped down to $100,000, and he was allowed to plead down to an unspecified lesser charge in August 2021. This of course was seven months after the MAGA insurrection, at which Beddingfield was caught on video outside the Capitol assaulting police, and then identified by Huffington Post reporters just three months later. For whatever reason this never came to the attention of the court in North Carolina prior to Beddingfield’s conviction for which he was only sentenced to probation. It took until February 2022 for the FBI to catch up to him.
Beddingfield laid low enough under pretrial conditions, except for that one Saturday night outing at Buffalo Wild Wings with his mom back last May. But as he faces sentencing on June 22nd, this period of relative peace will prove fleeting for him, as will our interest in covering the hard fist of the American federal justice system breaking his little fucking Nazi derelict jaw.