Santa Fe man accused in Capitol riot released pending trial

Apr. 24—A Santa Fe man facing criminal charges on suspicion he participated in the riot at the U.S. Capitol in January has been released to await trial.

Matthew Martin, 42, entered the Capitol Rotunda on the day of the riot but didn't know he wasn't supposed to be there, his attorney, Dan Cron, said Friday.

Cron said Martin attended a rally about a mile from the Capitol that morning, then returned to his hotel room to use the bathroom, eat and rest because services in the city were overloaded.

"He was in his hotel room when the Capitol perimeter was breached," Cron said, adding video and data from Martin's phone clearly shows his location at specific times in the day.

After resting in his room for a while, Cron said, Martin decided to go to the Capitol, where others from the rally had said they planned to go.

"By the time he went, there were no barriers up where he was," Cron said. "There were no police telling people to leave or anything like that, and the way he gained entrance is that a Capitol Police officer actually held the door open for him and others to get in. ... He went in because he'd never been there before, and he just wanted to see what the inside of the Rotunda looked like."

"While he was inside, he committed no violence or vandalism," Cron said. "He wasn't hooting or hollering or anything like that. He was just taking pictures of the inside of the Rotunda. He wasn't there very long, and he never wandered into any other part of the Capitol."

Cron said Martin left the building when he saw Washington, D.C., police officers in bright-green vests gathering on the opposite side of the Rotunda.

"He saw that and said, 'It looks like they are going to want people to leave,' " Cron said. "So he left and never went back inside again."

Martin went to Washington alone, Cron said, and wasn't armed.

He has no affiliation with the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers "or any other radical anti-government group," Cron said.

An FBI criminal complaint says Martin works at a defense contracting company that works with the federal government, "holds a security clearance" and had taken leave from work that weekend.

Cron declined to say where Martin is employed.

"We're trying to maintain what precious little privacy he has right now in terms of his personal life," Cron said. "So I really don't want to address that out of respect for his workplace and his privacy."

Cron said Martin was contacted by the FBI after returning to New Mexico and has been cooperating ever since, including providing his cellphone and agreeing to turn himself in at the agency's Santa Fe office Thursday after learning he had been charged.

Martin is charged with knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority; disorderly conduct that impedes the conduct of government business; disruptive conduct in the Capitol buildings; and parading, demonstrating or picketing in the Capitol buildings, which Cron said are misdemeanor charges.

The first two charges are Class A misdemeanors, each carrying a potential penalty of one year of incarceration, according to Cron's co-counsel, Kitren Fischer. The other two are Class B misdemeanors, punishable by up to six months of incarceration.

Agents identified Martin through photos and video footage taken inside the Rotunda, the complaint shows, as well as cellphone data that shows he was in the Capitol that day.

Cron said the same photographs attached to the criminal complaint could prove beneficial to Martin's case.

For example, Cron said, one photo shows what appears to be a Capitol police officer leaning against a dark sliver on the edge of the frame, which Cron says is a door, in order to keep it open, as a crowd mills about inside the Rotunda.

Cron said there appeared to be two distinct groups of people who participated in the uprising in Washington: "the mob" of people who "intended to do ill to the government" and others "like Matt, who for better or worse literally saw this tweet the former president sent and wanted to go just to show support for him, and knew nothing about what's pretty clear to me now was a well-coordinated plan."