'Are you crazy?': Republican police officer grapples with Jan. 6 during 'Sedition Panda' trial

WASHINGTON — Prince George’s County Cpl. Scott Ainsworth has worked riots before. He did so in the aftermath of the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore and during unrest after University of Maryland athletic events — both celebratory ones, as well as riots when students were "upset about losing to Duke."

But testifying on Monday in the trial of Jesse James Rumson, a Jan. 6 defendant accused of assaulting Ainsworth outside the Capitol after he stormed the building while wearing a panda costume head, Ainsworth said he'd never seen anything like the Capitol attack, when rioters who believed former President Donald Trump's lies about the 2020 election directly attacked officers in police lines.

Ainsworth testified about his service in the military dating back to 1988, his riot training in Korea and his prior civil disturbance experience, when rioters might throw objects from afar but would never think of engaging directly with a wall of police shields.

“This is the first time any of us as riot officers have had a crowd do this to us,” Ainsworth said.

It took him “a couple of months to come to grips” with what happened on Jan. 6, Ainsworth testified during a bench trial for Rumson before U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee.

“I’m a Republican, these are my fellow Republicans,” Ainsworth testified, joking that he's from Oklahoma where you’re "born a Republican." But he said some of the fellow Republicans in his life now want nothing to do with him because of his service on Jan. 6.

“Are you crazy?” Ainsworth recalled thinking about those fellow Republicans who supported what happened that day. “This was stupid, it was not necessary.”

Rumson was arrested in February 2023. At one point, his trial was set to overlap with Trump's Washington trial on four charges in connection with his efforts to stay in office despite losing the 2020 presidential election. Then the Supreme Court intervened, based on Trump's argument about presidential immunity; now the former president's trial in Washington is unlikely to happen before the 2024 elections. If Trump wins, it may not happen at all. (As in his other cases, Trump has pleaded not guilty).

Ainsworth's testimony preceded testimony from Rumson himself on Tuesday. Ainsworth recalled arriving at the Capitol, the first time he’d ever been at the building and seeing a “triage” scene on the south side of the Capitol, where police and rioters were being treated for their injuries. His civil disturbance platoon was brought in to assist the Metropolitan Police Department and their goal had been to help keep rioters off the inauguration platform. But upon encountering “a sea of human beings” who were “very hostile” to law enforcement — with rioters telling officers to stand down and others yelling at fellow rioters to steal police shields — Ainsworth said he and other officers realized their original mission was a lost cause. Instead, they formed a police line on the upper west terrace, near the initial breach point, and helped clear the Capitol grounds.

It took “pure brute force,” along with chemical agents and wearing rioters down, to get the mob off the Capitol grounds that night, Ainsworth testified.

Rumson is being represented by Anthony Sabatini, a former Republican member of the Florida House of Representatives who lost the 2022 GOP primary for a U.S. House seat to now-Rep. Cory Mills. Mills filled a House seat that had belonged to a Democratic member of the Jan. 6 Committee and has co-sponsored legislation with Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., to impeach the federal prosecutor overseeing Jan. 6 prosecutions. “President Trump did not incite violence, he did not lead an insurrection, what he did is stand for the American people, and I’ll stand for him,” Mills said at a GOP press conference in February.

After the government rested its case on Tuesday, Sabatini moved for an acquittal, but Judge Nichols found that a reasonable fact-finder would be able to convict Rumson, pointing to the video evidence presented by prosecutors and the "quite credible" testimony from Ainsworth.

In his own testimony on Tuesday, Rumson said the Trump rally that preceded the Capitol attack was a "really happy event" and described seeing attendees climb up in trees and on top of port-a-potties for a better view. When Trump told them to go to the Capitol, he said, he followed.

Rumson claimed that he believed that the platform outside the Capitol that had been set up for Joe Biden's inauguration had been set up for the events of Jan. 6, that perhaps speakers would come out and talk about what happened during the Electoral College certification, a view he now concedes he realized was "naïve." He walked around the north side of the building and ended up just outside the first breach point. When another rioter breached the parliamentarian door by smashing out a window with his cane, evidence shows, Rumson jumped over a railing and joined the mob rushing inside. But in his testimony, he claimed that — despite the chaos unfolding around him, and the alarms ringing from the doors — the mob had been invited into the building. He said he thought seats might be on a "first come, first serve" basis, he said, so that's why he jumped over the railing.

"I was excited to get in," Rumson said on the stand. He then described coming face-to-face with officers in riot gear. That, he said, along with the tear gas, was his "first clue" that something might be amiss. He ended up in handcuffs but was soon seized by other rioters and ushered back out of the building, where other rioters let him out of his handcuffs.

Rumson claimed that police used excessive force after he told them, "I am not violent. I am not trying to trespass," and brought up George Washington. There are no cameras in the hallway where Rumson's initial arrest took place.

"I have no idea where the panda head went," Rumson testified, saying he was "completely dumbfounded" when he ended up outside of the Capitol, where he showed off his wrists after he was freed.

When he yelled "Join us!" at officers? That was just a call for unity, Rumson claimed. He also said he was "cognitively impaired" at the time and didn't even remember yelling "get a ram!" as rioters smashed a window, though prosecutors showed video evidence of him doing so. "I could not fathom myself saying such a thing," Rumson testified. "I think I was just parroting almost."

Rumson confessed that he had made contact with Ainsworth's face shield, but maintained that it was incidental contact after he was hit in the ribs. "My hand goes kinda wild," he said.

Federal prosecutors are set to begin cross-examining Rumson on Tuesday afternoon.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com