North Carolina’s youngest Jan. 6 defendant is scheduled to plead guilty. But to what?
North Carolina’s youngest defendant in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol could receive the longest sentence handed down so far to a state resident.
Aiden Bilyard, 20, is charged with nine crimes, including five felonies, tied to the riot aimed at blocking the congressional hearing on Jan. 6, 2021, to certify former President Donald Trump’s election loss to Joe Biden.
On Tuesday, the Cary resident is expected to change his plea from not guilty to guilty during a noon remote hearing before Senior U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton of Washington, D.C.
What Bilyard will be pleading guilty to, however, remains somewhat of a mystery.
On Jan. 6, the then-18-year-old was seen on video and in photographs firing an orange chemical spray — identified in a Friday court filing by prosecutors as “home defense pepper gel” — at a line of police officers defending the Capitol.
Garbed in a Harvard hoodie, Bilyard also used a baseball bat to break out a window that he and other rioters used to breach the building, court documents show.
On Aug. 5, 2021, when Bilyard was in basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, he told the FBI during an interview that he only participated in “lawful activities” at the Capitol, according to a bureau affidavit. After an agent showed him videos revealing his actual behavior, Bilyard ended the interview. “I think this is where I take my leave,” Bilyard said, according to the affidavit.
The Wake County resident was arrested on Nov. 23, 2021. His January indictment charged him with multiple crimes of violence involving “a deadly and dangerous weapon.”
In June, prosecutors offered to drop eight charges included in his indictment if Bilyard pleaded guilty to one count of assaulting, resisting and impeding officers with a deadly and dangerous weapon. Under the deal, Bilyard faced an estimated sentencing range of 46-57 months.
But according to a Friday filing by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, Bilyard notified the courts on Sept. 6 that he intended to plead guilty to all nine counts of the indictment. Estimated sentencing range: 57 to 71 months.
Why Bilyard would plead “straight up” to the indictment — and face an additional year on his possible sentencing — remains unclear. Bilyard did not respond to a Monday email from The Charlotte Observer seeking comment. Neither did one of his attorneys, Jamie Vavonese of Raleigh.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington also declined to comment Friday and referred the Observer to that day’s filing by federal prosecutors.
Walton, a George W. Bush-appointee to the D.C. federal courts, will have the final say on Bilyard’s sentence. He can go above or below the guidelines or what prosecutors recommend.
Legal experts contacted by the Observer said Bilyard and his attorneys may have rejected the plea deal for a number of reasons: from hoping for a lighter sentence from the judge, to balking at a common government demand for Bilyard’s cooperation against other Jan. 6 defendants to preserving his right to an appeal.
At least 24 North Carolinians have been charged in connection with the riot, which led to five deaths and left 140 police officers injured. Almost $1.5 million in damage to the Capitol occurred.
Up to now, the longest sentence handed down to an N.C. defendant is 44 months. It will be served by James Mault, a former Fort Bragg soldier who, as Bilyard is expected to do, pleaded guilty to firing a chemical spray at police.
Two other N.C. residents, James Bertino of Belmont and William Todd Wilson of Newton Grove already have pleaded guilty and await sentencing on the historically rare crime of seditious conspiracy, the most serious charge to come out of the sprawling Jan. 6 prosecution that has led to almost 900 arrests.
Bertino, a leader in the right-wing militia group known as the Proud Boys, faces up to five years in prison. He is accused of helping plan his group’s assault on the Capitol and has agreed to testify against other members if required to do so by the government.
In return for his cooperation, prosecutors said they they might seek leniency at Bertino’s sentencing or hide him in a federal witness-protection program.
This story was originally published October 17, 2022 at 5:26 PM with the headline "North Carolina’s youngest Jan. 6 defendant is scheduled to plead guilty. But to what?."
