Arlington Proud Boy ‘Milkshake’ arrested in Capitol siege

ARLINGTON — A Proud Boy from Arlington has been arrested on charges of assaulting two federal officers, among other crimes, while trying to breach the U.S. Capitol in January.

In court records made public Thursday, federal agents cited a January report by The Daily Herald identifying Daniel Lyons Scott, whose nickname is “Milkshake,” as a prominent member of the far-right group who led a final push to storm Congress on Jan. 6 to oppose the election loss of former President Donald Trump.

Scott, 28, a former Boeing employee from Snohomish County, was arrested Thursday in Bradenton, Florida, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia. Scott made no secret about his affiliation with the violent hate group over the past two years when he lived near Arlington, showing up at events around the Pacific Northwest with the group’s name emblazoned in bright yellow on a black tactical vest. The words “Proud Boy” were tattooed in stylized lettering on his left arm. Scott voted in Washington’s 2020 primary. Public records show he did not vote in November.

The Proud Boys are considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. They are self-described as “Western chauvinists” and advocates for a “white, English-speaking way of life,” according to founder Gavin McInnes. The group gained a massive boost of notoriety when Trump declined to explicitly denounce hate groups in the lead-up to the 2020 election, telling the Proud Boys specifically: “Stand back and stand by.”

Weeks later, The Wall Street Journal documented the group’s role in the violent effort to stop Congress from confirming the election results. Far-right groups were present in Washington, D.C., in large numbers that day. Many of their actions were streamed live online.

The Daily Herald independently reviewed many hours of that footage in January, shared by the investigative news outlet ProPublica and other sources, confirming Scott was embedded among the main instigators of violence.

Just before the siege, Scott was in a group of dozens of men marching in opposition to the “stolen” election — alongside Proud Boys leaders Ethan Nordean, of King County, and Joe Biggs, of Florida.

In a video shared on YouTube by Proud Boy Eddie Block, marchers paused their rally in the hours before the attempted coup. The dome of the Capitol was in the distance.

“Milkshake,” as Scott was known, appeared several times in the video. He was a large bearded man in custom sunglasses, wearing a puffy olive-green jacket and a blue baseball cap with the words, “God Guns & Trump.”

At one point before the siege, the Proud Boys lined up for a photo. Somebody off-camera shouted to the group: “Let’s take the (expletive) Capitol!”

“Let’s not (expletive) yell that, OK?” responded a man dressed in black, with a neck scarf covering his face.

Another Proud Boy spoke into a megaphone.

“It was Milkshake, man,” Nordean said. “Idiot.”

Minutes later Scott is seen again in the video, speaking in hushed voices with Nordean and a few others. Scott’s jacket was unzipped, exposing a “black ballistic vest” and a pair of yellow goggles dangling from the vest, according to the new criminal complaint filed by the FBI.

Federal charges show images of Scott that day “at the front lines” of the final push to breach the west side of the Capitol, wearing the same hat, the same goggles and the same jacket.

“Scott can be seen pushing two U.S. Capitol Police officers backward, up the steps,” according to the FBI complaint. “He appears to be one of the first, or perhaps the first, persons to initiate contact with law enforcement at this location. Scott then appears to pull one of the two officers into the crowd for approximately 3-4 seconds before another officer is able to pull the officer out of the crowd.”

The officers retreated. Scott retreated, too, back into the crowd, under a hail of punches from another person in the mob. The crowd burst through the police line. They were some of the first rioters to smash windows and storm the building.

The new charges don’t say if Scott ever made it inside.

One of the men who rushed up the steps was Proud Boy Dominic “Spaz” Pezzola, of New York. Streaming video showed him using a riot shield stolen from an officer to shatter a window, allowing a mob to flood into the halls of Congress.

A confidential informant told authorities that people in Pezzola’s group planned to kill Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and then-Vice President Mike Pence, if they could find them, according to federal charges.

Live footage scraped from conservative social media website Parler suggested Nordean and Biggs made it inside, too.

Nordean was charged in February with breaching the Capitol. Biggs, who cracked a big smile when Scott yelled about “taking” the Capitol, has been charged, too.

In the weeks before the election, Scott streamed videos on his YouTube channel, wearing the blue hat with the emblem, “God Guns & Trump.” Some of his videos were streamed with other Proud Boys living in Florida.

Social media posts appear to show Scott confronting Black Lives Matter protesters in Florida in November 2020, around the time of the election.

After the siege, two confidential sources confirmed Scott was present at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, according to charges against the Snohomish County man.

At least four people died of injuries suffered in the Capitol siege. The death of Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick was later classified as “natural causes,” related to strokes he suffered in the riot’s aftermath, according to the chief medical examiner in Washington, D.C.

The prosecution of the Capitol rioters has grown into perhaps the most expansive criminal case in U.S. history. An estimated 440 people have been arrested, with more than 125 of those accused of assaulting or impeding law enforcement, the U.S. Department of Justice reported Thursday.

Federal authorities have accused Scott of six crimes in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia:

• Assault on a federal officer with physical contact and intent to commit another felony;

• Disorderly conduct and act of physical violence in any restricted building or grounds;

• Knowingly entering and disorderly conduct in any restricted building or grounds;

• Knowingly engaging in an act of physical violence in any restricted building or grounds;

• Obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder;

• Obstruction of justice/Congress.

Those charges appeared to have been submitted to U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui in late April but weren’t made public until now.

Caleb Hutton: 425-339-3454; chutton@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @snocaleb.