Left: Miles Adkins, circled in yellow in a Justice Department exhibit, is seen helping a fellow rioter through a broken window moments after Adkins also climbed through it. Top right: Adkins in crypt, yelling at officers (Justice Department court records). Bottom right: Miles Adkins, circled in red, holds a canned Coors Lite (Justice Department court records). Prosecutors say they were able to identify him in part because he bragged about drinking the beverage inside the Capitol in Facebook messages to friends.
A school board member and self-professed “escort” for the Oath Keepers who boasted of cracking open a cold one inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, was arrested in Virginia on Wednesday.
Miles Adkins was charged with entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.
A statement of facts alleges that Adkins planned on coming to Washington, D.C., from his home in Stephens City, Virginia, a few hours away on the eve of the attack on the Capitol. Facebook messages retrieved from his cellphone by the FBI, according to court records, show him asking someone — believed by prosecutors to be member of the right-wing Oath Keepers extremist group — if they were also going to Washington, D.C., and then offering them a ride. On one condition.
Adkins didn’t want to leave too early.
“Y, so we can listen to the same speech 1000 times?” Adkins allegedly wrote in a message when his contact suggested leaving the house around 6:30 a.m.
“Fights are at night,” the other person replied.
On Jan. 6, federal prosecutors allege Adkins walked from Trump’s rally at the Ellipse to the U.S. Capitol and got inside the building promptly. Closed circuit security footage as well social media posts Adkins shared of himself helped the FBI identify him.
He wasn’t particularly well-cloaked, either.
Adkins wore a baseball cap with large bright white letters across the front reading: “CHUCK.” It was also adorned with large gold leaves on its bill.
When the FBI finally interviewed him, Adkins told authorities he only came to hear Trump’s speech at the Ellipse, though he admitted to walking with a “large group” to the Capitol where he claimed to see “no barriers” in place. Though, he added, he watched other people scuffling with police around him.
There were also the sounds of “flash detonations,” he told the FBI.
But Adkins wouldn’t tell them what he did once he was inside the building.
Prosecutors say he admitted to working as an “escort for persons associated with the Oath Keepers” prior to Jan. 6, 2021, namely, for rallies in Washington, D.C., in November and December of 2020. Two prominent rallies during those months, the “Million MAGA March” and the “Stop the Steal” rally, were rife with violence, and when Oath Keepers and Proud Boys alike were prosecuted on seditious conspiracy charges tied to Jan. 6, both rallies were pointed to as proving grounds for members of the far-right networks.
When he wasn’t purportedly moonlighting with the Oath Keepers, Adkins was a publicly-elected member of the Frederick County School Board, Virginia news outlet the Winchester Star reported. He was elected in 2021.
“I heard antifa took the capital or was that us?” a contact wrote him on Facebook on Jan. 7
“Us,” Adkins replied.
He is accused of breaching the Capitol minutes after the first wave of rioters forced their way inside and prosecutors say he entered through a Senate wing door as lawmakers were still evacuating. Waving rioters through the opening, he helped at least one person climb through broken glass, his criminal complaint alleges. Then he took off for the Capitol’s crypt and stopped when he reached a law library.
He was holding a “large, canned beverage,” the statement of facts alleges.
It was a Coors Lite.
“You all going home now?” an unidentified person wrote to Adkins around this time.
“No I still need to fight antifa,” he responded, before adding that he was “getting food, then fighting.”
“I drank fireball and a coors lite in the capitol,” Adkins boasted, referencing the cinnamon-flavored liqueur and popular beer.
In this Justice Department provided photo, prosecutors say accused rioter Miles Adkins can be seen holding the can of Coors Light that he bragged about drinking when talking about his foray on Jan. 6 to a friend on Facebook.
In the next message, when Adkins’ contact told him he “better go out with a bang” and “don’t let it be for nothing,” the Virginia school board member replied with a slur: “N—- you know this.”
Federal court records show Adkins was released on his own recognizance and ordered not to use drugs or drink in excess. Nor is he allowed to possess any firearms.
As noted by the Winchester Star, Adkins has been in the hot seat before. In January 2022, in opposition to a mask mandate in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, he posted images to the school board’s Facebook page that depicted members with devil horns as well as mustaches in the style of Adolf Hitler.
He hasn’t stepped down from his role on the board despite a history of controversy and lawbreaking. In the spring of 2022, Adkins was charged with public intoxication and then, a year later in September 2023, he pleaded guilty to reckless driving once a DWI, or driving while intoxicated, charge was amended.
