The man who photographed himself in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) office after a pro-Trump mob overtook the Capitol Wednesday said on social media he was prepared for violent revolution, The Washington Post reported.
Richard Barnett of Gravette, Ark., confirmed his identity to both local media and The New York Times’s Matthew Rosenberg, who was present outside the Capitol in the aftermath of the riot.
Barnett told reporters he took a document from Pelosi’s desk but insisted he “left a quarter on her desk.”
Barnett told an Arkansas CBS affiliate that he was tear-gassed by police during the riot and that he left a profane note on Pelosi’s desk.
Barnett said, on a Facebook account that was locked or removed on Wednesday evening, that he “came into this world kicking and screaming, covered in someone else’s blood” and was “not afraid to go out the same way.”
The account, as well as another under the name “George Reincarnated Patton,” frequently promoted false conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud, according to The Washington Post.
Barnett blasted Pelosi last week in a Facebook post for using “white nationalist” as a pejorative.
“I am white. There is no denying that. I am a nationalist. I put my nation first. So that makes me a white nationalist,” he wrote.
Barnett’s social media also indicated he has raised money for the anti-human trafficking campaign “Save Our Children,” which has increasingly been hijacked by the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, prompting Facebook to curtail the use of the hashtag, according to the Post.
A man who shares Barnett’s name and hometown received $9,300 in federal Paycheck Protection Program loans this year for a glass installation business, but it was not immediately clear whether it was the same man.