Floyd Ray Roseberry, the North Carolina man arrested for threatening to blow up the U.S. Capitol building this week, was formally charged in D.C. federal court Friday and ordered to remain in custody.
Mr. Roseberry, who threatened a day earlier to detonate explosives from his pick-up truck parked near the Capitol, has been charged with threatening to use explosives and a weapon of mass destruction.
A federal magistrate ordered Mr. Roseberry held without bond and set a competency hearing for Aug. 25. The mass destruction charge, the more serious of the two, is punishable by up to life in prison.
Mr. Roseberry, a resident of Grover, west of Charlotte, was arrested early Thursday afternoon roughly five hours after he parked his truck outside the Library of Congress and said it was rigged to explode.
Some of the standoff was broadcast live on social media from a Facebook account maintained by Mr. Roseberry. The FBI cited excerpts in an affidavit in support of the criminal complaint charging him.
“Hey, call the police and tell them to come out here and clear the Capitol,” Mr. Roseberry said at one point, as quoted in the court filing. The FBI said he also claimed to have 2.5 pounds of explosives.
“They need to clear that ‘cause I got a bomb in here,” Mr. Roseberry is quoted as saying. “I don’t want nobody hurt. I’m not coming here to hurt nobody. I’m not lying, tell them there’s some more.”
The standoff ended without any explosions occurring. Mr. Roseberry was arrested, and police recovered what appeared to be an explosive device from his vehicle and sent it to an FBI lab for analysis.
Mr. Roseberry identified himself during the standoff, and Facebook records confirm he is the subscriber of the account that broadcast some of the standoff, an FBI special agent wrote on the affidavit.
Additionally, the FBI special agent wrote that a relative of Mr. Roseberry had contacted local police the day prior to the standoff to alert the authorities that he might commit violence in the capital.
The relative “reported their concern that ROSEBERRY had recently expressed anti-government views and an intent to travel to Virginia or Washington, D.C. to conduct acts of violence,” the FBI agent wrote.
In the Facebook video, Mr. Roseberry ranted against Democrats including President Biden and claimed he was participating in a “revolution” and encouraged other “patriots” to join him.
David Bos, a public defender representing Mr. Roseberry, declined to comment.
The standoff near the Capitol occurred less than eight months since it was raided by supporters of then-President Trump as Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 election he lost to Mr. Biden.
Days earlier, a bulletin issued last week by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned of “continued, non-specific calls for violence” on internet platforms associated with “conspiracy theories on perceived election fraud and alleged reinstatement,” among other threats.