Nathan Earl Hughes

A federal judge has granted a defense request for another trial delay in the case of a Bentonville man charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the nation’s Capitol.

The trial for Nathan Earl Hughes, 34, will now begin Aug. 6 in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. It previously was scheduled to start next Monday.

Felony charges against Hughes include assaulting an officer and obstructing, impeding or interfering with a law enforcement officer during a civil disorder. Hughes also is charged with three misdemeanor offenses.

Hughes wasn’t arrested until August and is free on his own recognizance.

Judge Carl J. Nichols granted the most recent trial delay at the request of the defense which noted the government had recently revised the indictment of Hughes to say he assaulted a U.S. Capitol police officer rather than a Metropolitan Police officer as originally alleged.

According to an FBI special agent’s statement of facts filed early in the case, Hughes grabbed at officers’ riot shields and tried to take them away inside a Capitol tunnel. At one point, the statement says, Hughes used his elbow to strike in the direction of an officer holding a shield. After Hughes was eventually pushed out of the tunnel, the special agent reported, Hughes was heard shouting to others in the mob, “Pull them out!” Hughes had earlier in the day seen officers being pulled from the tunnel into the crowd, the statement said.

Rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in hopes of preventing certification of the 2020 presidential election of Joe Biden over Donald Trump, who was still president then.

Debra Hale-Shelton reports for the Arkansas Times. She has previously worked for The Associated Press and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. A Marked Treean by birth, a Chicagoan by choice, she now lives in...