SC man gets 60 days to decide whether to face trial on Capitol riot charges or plead guilty

A lawyer for an Anderson County man who faces charges of interfering with a police officer during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot on Wednesday received two additional months to study prosecution evidence.

The man, George Tenney III, a supporter of former President Donald Trump, is now slated to appear on March 29 by remote video linkup before U.S. Judge Thomas Hogan.

On that date, Tenney will likely announce a decision to plead guilty or stand trial on multiple charges connected with the storming of the Capitol.

Hogan presided over a 10-minute hearing Wednesday called to determine the trial status of Tenney and a Texas man, Darrell Alan Youngers.

Tenney and Youngers, who are co-defendants in the case, were in the Capitol together on Jan. 6, 2021, at the time a mob stormed the building, causing Congress to flee, according to a 30-page federal complaint.

So far, 11 people from South Carolina have been arrested by the FBI in connection with the storming of the Capitol. Tenney faces more serious charges than most.

Tenney and Youngers entered the Capitol building on the Senate side at 2:20 p.m. on that day, at about the same time that U.S. senators and Vice President Mike Pence were starting to flee the Senate chambers to go to secure safe areas, according to the federal complaint.

Once inside the building, Tenney began to help rioters outside the building get inside, according to the complaint.

“Video footage captured Tenney confronting federal officers as he sought to open the East Rotunda Doors from the inside to allow rioters to enter, despite police efforts to keep the doors shut and keep the rioters outside,” the complaint said.

A Capitol staff member identified only as J.G. “ran toward Tenney, pushed him aside, and tried to close the door Tenney had opened. ... Tenney then ran to the door again and made physical contact with J.G., appearing to grab him by the shoulder. Their faces close together, the two men (Tenney and the officer) had a heated conversation.

“According to J.G., Tenney said, in substance, ‘You’re not gonna stop us’,” the complaint said.

Shortly afterward, as more rioters began to stream into the Capitol, Tenney encouraged them, shouting “Come on, Americans!”, patting one on the back and shoving a Capitol police officer off to the side, the complaint said.

Weeks before the Jan. 6 riot, Tenney had planned to go to Washington to protest Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in the November 2020 election.

“It’s starting to look like we may siege the capital (sic) building and congress if the electoral votes don’t go right. ... we are forming plans for every scenario,” Tenney wrote in a digital message recovered by the FBI before the riot.

A federal grand jury indicted Tenney in October on nine charges, including one count of assaulting an officer, two counts involving committing acts of violence, two counts of disorderly conduct and one count of obstructing Congress’ efforts to certify electoral votes.

In the same indictment, Youngers faces several charges. But he was not charged with any of the violence-related counts that Tenney is.

So far six of the 11 South Carolinians arrested for storming the Capitol have pleaded guilty. One, Andrew Hatley, who committed no violent acts, was sentenced to probation. Five others have yet to be sentenced.

Five others, including Tenney, have yet to decide whether to go to trial or plead guilty.

Last Jan. 6, a joint session of Congress had been called to certify Biden’s victory in the Electoral College. But before the counting began, Trump and associates staged a rally near the White House during which they repeated false claims that Biden and the Democrats had stolen the election with massive voter fraud. After the rally, thousands of protesters marched to the Capitol, where it is estimated that more than 1,000 broke through police lines and stormed the building.

In court papers, prosecutors have described the storming of the Capitol as “a violent attack that forced an interruption of the certification of the 2020 Electoral College vote count, threatened the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 presidential election, injured more than one hundred law enforcement officers, and resulted in more than $1 million in property damage.”

Tenney’s lawyer is James Loggins, a federal public defender based in Greenville. Youngers’ lawyer is Alex Omar Rosa-Ambert, a federal public defender based in Houston. The federal prosecutor is Alexis Loeb, an assistant U.S. attorney based in San Francisco.

More than 725 people have been arrested to date in the Jan. 6 riot, and the FBI is still searching for several hundred more suspects.

This story was originally published January 12, 2022 at 5:27 PM.