Two years later, Missouri man charged in Capitol riot, accused of assaulting officer
Authorities have arrested a southwest Missouri man on felony charges in connection with the Capitol riot that include assaulting a law enforcement officer.
Kyler Joseph Bard, 26, of Seneca, was arrested in Joplin on Tuesday, court records show. He is charged in federal court with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers and civil disorder, both felonies. The court documents in the case were unsealed on Tuesday.
Bard is the 24th Missouri resident to be charged in a Capitol riot case.
He also faces five other counts — entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly conduct in a Capitol Building or grounds; and engaging in an act of violence in the Capitol grounds or buildings.
According to the charging document, Bard was walking along a ledge on the Upper West Terrace of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, where officers had formed a police line as a barrier. Body-worn camera footage from the Metropolitan Police Department showed that around 3:30 p.m., a man wearing a white sweatshirt and a red, white and blue winter cap with the words “Trump” and a “45” logo on it could be seen inciting a crowd of rioters.
The man, later identified as Bard, was carrying a megaphone and yelling, “Move! Move! Move! We gotta push! We gotta push! Let’s go! We gotta go! Let’s go!” the document said.
Bard then turned directly to an officer, and as he yelled “Let’s push,” he shoved the officer, identified in the document as “Officer M.G.”
“Officer M.G. repelled Bard’s assault, and Bard fell backwards after continuing to resist and push against Officer M.G.,” the document said. “As Bard fell to the ground, Bard yelled to the crowd of officers, ‘You’re all a bunch of pieces of s---.’”
Bard then got up and went back into the crowd, the document said. A review of a video posted on Twitter showed a man who appeared to be Bard talking on a cellphone outside the Capitol.
“Bard can be heard stating, ‘I’ve already been maced, punched, they took my microphone away, and, uh, when I punched them, they punched me back. Maced me in the face. But it’s what we gotta do. We gotta get inside, we gotta take it over. We gotta do it.’”
Following the insurrection, images of Bard participating in the riot appeared on the internet, the document said. The FBI created a profile of Bard based on the images, giving him the moniker “AFO-447,” according to the document.
The FBI posted those images on its website and on social media, asking for the public’s help in identifying the man, the document said. A confidential source came forward, providing material from the Instagram account of a “kyler_bard” that appeared to show Bard on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, it said.
The user of that account had posted a photo of someone appearing to pour water in Bard’s eyes and referenced how he had been “maced and punched for yelling in a megaphone,” the document said.
The FBI contacted Bard at his home, it said, and the agent who interviewed him confirmed that he was the same person as the man in the photos.
“During the interview, Bard admitted to attending the Stop The Steal rally in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, but informed agents that he did not enter the Capitol and did nothing illegal,” the charging document said.
In the two years since the insurrection, more than 950 people have been arrested in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol, according to the Justice Department. Of those, more than 284 individuals have been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement.
