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Ex-officer texted ‘We stormed the Capitol’ during Jan. 6 riot, feds say, and tipsters turned him in

Rioters try to break past police in U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6. (Video: Newsflare)

A former Salt Lake City police officer was arrested Friday for allegedly taking part in the mob that breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, joining a growing list of current and former law enforcement officers charged in the riot.

Federal authorities said Michael Lee Hardin, 50, entered the building with hundreds of other pro-Trump rioters and posed for a picture in the Capitol Crypt, then bragged about his actions in text messages with friends and family.

Hardin, who served on the police force for nearly two decades before retiring in 2017, is charged with knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building, disorderly conduct, and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.

In a hearing Friday via Zoom, a judge ordered Hardin to self-surrender in the District of Columbia by April 8. Prosecutors didn’t seek to have him detained while his case proceeds, but local media reported that he was ordered to give up his passport and firearms.

A federal public defender representing Hardin didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.

A Black Lives Matter activist exposed the role two local police officers played in the Capitol insurrection. Their small town rapidly took sides.

More than a dozen current and former law enforcement officers have been arrested and charged in connection with the insurrection at the Capitol, where supporters of former president Donald Trump violently tried to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the November election. Five people died as a result of the riot, including a U.S. Capitol Police officer, and many more were wounded.

The arrests have raised alarms about the presence of right-wing extremists among the rank-and-file of police departments across the country. Police leaders, long reluctant to scrutinize their own officers’ extremist ties, are now facing intense pressure to root out staff with links to white supremacist and armed far-right groups.

The FBI zeroed in on Hardin by following leads provided by two tipsters, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court.

The first came in the day after the riot on the bureau’s threat hotline. A person reporting to be a friend who used to work with Hardin’s wife told investigators that Hardin had called earlier that week to say he was headed to Washington to “fight for the United States,” according to the complaint. As the mob swarmed the Capitol the afternoon of Jan. 6, Hardin texted the tipster that they were inside, investigators said.

“We stormed the Capitol, I am in here now!” he wrote, according to court records. “I know you don’t like Trump, but He is the rightful President!”

“We will return until we win!” he allegedly wrote in another message.

A few days later, the FBI said, investigators received another tip from someone saying they’d known Hardin for more than 20 years.

The person turned over a picture of Hardin standing beside a bust of Abraham Lincoln in what appeared to be the Capitol Crypt and said Hardin had texted it to a relative, according to the complaint. In the image, a man identified by authorities as Hardin can be seen wearing a dark jacket and blue “TRUMP” beanie and posing next to the marble sculpture.

Location data from Google obtained through a search warrant also showed that a mobile device linked to Hardin was in the Capitol the afternoon of the riot, the complaint says.

Additionally, investigators also said they identified Hardin in other photos and videos taken inside the building, including a clip that allegedly showed him walking through the Capitol Crypt with a cellphone in his hand.

When the FBI ran Hardin’s name through law enforcement databases, investigators said, he showed up as a former Salt Lake City police officer who lived in Kaysville, Utah. The phone number associated with the Google account tracked by investigators matched a number for Hardin in those databases, according to the complaint.

A Salt Lake City police spokesperson confirmed Hardin had retired from the department as an officer in December 2017. Records show he was on the force for nearly 20 years and had served as a detective for part of that time.

Hardin won an “officer of the year” award from the department in 2012 for solving a 25-year-old murder case, and received an accolade in 2014 while working on the property crimes team, according to police records.

But he faced disciplinary action and had a falling out with some of his colleagues in his final years on the force, news archives show.

In 2015, Hardin was placed on administrative leave and had his vehicle, badges and guns confiscated following a tense encounter with a female detective who was leasing a home from him in Kaysville, Utah, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. The detective said Hardin had driven to the property that summer after being warned by a superior to stay away and nudged her with his car as she stood in the driveway, according to the Tribune.

Hardin denied that he had hit the detective and filed a lawsuit seeking $300,000 in damages from her and department leaders on allegations of defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and other claims, local media reported. The case was dismissed in 2017, around the same time Hardin retired.

Read more:

‘Front of the pack’: Off-duty Pa. officer charged at police during the Capitol riot, FBI says

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