Patrick Douglas Scruggs, who previously prosecuted several January 6 cases in his capacity as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, now faces charges of aggravated battery, aggravated assault, and armed burglary after being arrested for a road rage incident in which he allegedly stabbed an incapacitated driver on a bridge in Tampa, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.
Scruggs spearheaded the prosecution of Adam Johnson, also known as “Lectern Guy,” for his involvement in carrying then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s lectern through the Capitol Rotunda on January 6, 2021.
Last year, Johnson received a sentence of 75 days in prison and a $5,000 fine.
The suspect is Patrick Scruggs, a man who prosecuted multiple January 6th cases pic.twitter.com/NhQ6btnX3n
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 27, 2023
From Tampa Bay Times:
The Tampa man accused of stabbing another motorist after a crash on the Howard Frankland Bridge on Tuesday is a former assistant U.S. attorney who spent about a decade at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tampa.
Patrick Douglas Scruggs, 38, worked for the U.S. Attorney’s Office from 2013 until 2023, according to his LinkedIn page. In May, he joined Barnes and Thornburg, an Atlanta-based private law firm, as an “of counsel” attorney, the page says. The page describes Scruggs as “a seasoned litigator and investigator with experience in various practice areas of criminal law. …”
Now Scruggs faces his own legal trouble stemming from a bizarre chain of events that unfolded on the Howard Frankland as rush hour was winding down on Tuesday.
According to a news release issued Tuesday by the Florida Highway Patrol, a 40-year-old Tampa man was driving a sedan south on Interstate 275 when he and his 43-year-old wife noticed a vehicle that was stopped in the travel lanes of the bridge shortly before 9:24 a.m. The 35-year-old driver, also of Tampa, was slumped over inside his sedan, troopers said, so the couple pulled over in front of the car to help.
The 40-year-old man was unable to get inside the other sedan, so he walked back to his car to get something that could break the window. While he was doing that, the 35-year-old man woke up and accelerated forward, crashing into the couple’s sedan. He shifted into reverse and then tried to get around the couple’s sedan, according to troopers, but at that point, he struck Scruggs’ sedan as he was driving by the scene.
Scruggs pulled over, got out and walked up to the driver of the vehicle that hit his car. According to the Highway Patrol, Scruggs broke a window and started stabbing the 35-year-old man with a pocketknife.
Johnson commented on Scruggs’ arrest, saying, “Meet the guy who prosecuted me in Tampa for walking in a building on January 6th. My crimes were so egregious that he demanded I wear an ankle monitor, be drugged tested at random, surrender my passports, be restricted to middle district of Florida, and given a nightly curfew. What restrictions do you think he should get for stabbing a man repeatedly in public?”
Meet the guy who prosecuted me in Tampa for walking in a building on January 6th.
— The Lectern Guy🇺🇸 (@lecternleader) September 27, 2023
My crimes were so egregious that he demanded I wear an ankle monitor, be drugged tested at random, surrender my passports, be restricted to middle district of Florida, and given a nightly curfew.…
Scruggs was released Tuesday night on $65,000 bail for charges of Armed Burglary, Aggravated Assault, and Aggravated Battery with a deadly weapon. The victim was transported to the hospital with injuries described as “serious but not life-threatening.”
