(Source: MIRS.news, Published 08/22/2024)The FBI says a North Branch man who wrote a first-person account under a pen name about the Jan. 6 riot is now facing charges. 

Nathan Thornsberry, 42, is accused of joining a group fighting police during the attack, according to a criminal complaint unsealed on Thursday. 

Thornsberry, wearing a black U.S. Marines jacket, Trump 2020 shirt and black gloves with what appears to be reinforced knuckles, repeatedly yelled “Bring it” as he tried to push a bike rack into a row of law enforcement officers. 

“I’m Nate, yeah Nathan Thornsberry, I’m from Michigan,” he told investigators. “I got right up in the front of the middle here. They came on it pretty hard push back so we linked arms and just started pushing. I stayed up there for about four different pushes, got blasted over and over and over.” 

Thornsberry was charged with entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly or disruptive conduct; physical violence; obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder and assaulting, resisting or impeding officers. He faces up to 10 years or more in prison if he is convicted as charged. 

Thornsberry made his initial appearance in court on Thursday and Magistrate Judge Curtis Ivy Jr. set a $10,000 unsecured bond. 

The criminal complaint says Thornsberry wrote a self-published account of the event under the name “Nathaniel Matthews.” 

That book, “January 6th Redux: A Patriot’s Story,” is described as “the book they don’t want you to read. These are the pictures they don’t want you to see. Over 100 color images with an eye-witness account and video analysis of January 6th, 2021, brings the events at the U.S. Capitol to light.” 

The book includes statements by Thornsberry that he participated in the Jan. 6 riot because he sensed “an internal threat, a threat that played a significant role in the deterioration of the war on terror, perverting it and turning it inward towards our own citizens.”