Armed US Capitol rioter tells investigators if he had found Pelosi, ‘you’d be here for another reason’

By Hannah Rabinowitz and Holmes Lybrand, CNN

An Indiana man charged with carrying a loaded firearm onto the US Capitol grounds and assaulting police officers during the January 6 riot told investigators that if he had visited House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that day, “you’d be here for another reason,” according to recently unsealed court documents.

Mark Mazza has been charged with five federal crimes, including illegal possession of a firearm on Capitol grounds and assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers with a dangerous weapon.

According to the court documents, he lost his firearm during a battle with police on the Lower West Terrace of the Capitol building. Police recovered the gun — a Taurus revolver — which was loaded with five rounds, including shotgun ammunition capable of going after “multiple targets at the same time,” investigators said.

Investigators found Mazza after he reported to local police that the gun was stolen from his car in Ohio, though he later admitted to the FBI that he falsified the report in case a member of Antifa found and killed someone with the weapon. Mazza also denied assaulting police, though footage from the Capitol building allegedly shows Mazza swinging a baton at a line of officers.

Mazza told investigators that he “never did get to talk to Nancy” and thought he and the California Democrat would “hit it off.”

“I was glad I didn’t, because you’d be here for another reason,” he said.

Mazza also claimed he was prepared to surrender because he “may go down as a hero,” referred to himself as a nonviolent patriot and requested that he be placed in a “fed,” if he was arrested so that he would be given “three squares, a nice clean room” and free health care.

At least 665 people have been charged in connection to the January 6 Capitol insurrection.

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