A Marathon man who admitted to assaulting police during the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol riots and was sentenced to 45 months in prison for the felony was the featured speaker, with his wife, at the Southernmost Republican Club meeting in Key West that started at 6 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 8 at the Key West Yacht Club.
Bryan Bishop and his wife, Tonya Bishop, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor offense and was sentenced to two years probation, were both among more than 1,500 rioters who were pardoned on President Donald Trump’s first day in office in January 2025. Bryan Bishop had served five months of his 45-month sentence when the pardons were issued.
Originally arrested in Marathon in August 2023, Bryan Bishop pleaded guilty in April 2024 to a felony charge of assaulting, resisting or impeding officers after video footage from the Jan. 6 riots captured him spraying a Metropolitan Police Department officer in the face with a chemical irritant before entering the Capitol.
“This is a big one,” Trump said on his first day back in office of the “full, complete and unconditional” pardons that drew condemnation from Democratic lawmakers and even a few Republicans.
“It is a betrayal of the law enforcement that protected all of us that day and a dangerous endorsement of political violence, telling criminals that you can beat cops within an inch of their lives as long as it’s in service to Donald Trump,” Democratic Sen. Patty Murray said of the blanket pardons in January.
Though Trump had for months promised to grant clemency to many Jan. 6 defendants, some still questioned prior to Inauguration Day whether the pardons would include violent offenders and those who had assaulted law enforcement officers during the riots.
In a Jan. 12 interview with Fox News, Vice President JD Vance said that those who committed violence on Jan. 6 “obviously shouldn’t be pardoned,” causing backlash from right-wing supporters.
Bryan and Tanya Bishop, who have since returned to their liveboard boat in Boot Key Harbor off Marathon, were the featured guest speakers at the Southernmost Republican Club meeting on Monday, Sept. 8 at the Key West Yacht Club.
Press was not allowed at the meeting, which was only open to registered Republicans, but the club faced backlash on local social media pages as word of its guest speakers spread.
Todd German, vice chairman of the Southernmost Republican Club, told the Keys Weekly that he was aware of some opposition from local Democrat activists, but said the Bishops had already spoken at meetings of the Upper Keys and Middle Keys Republican Clubs with no issues.
Speaking with the Keys Weekly a few hours before the meeting, German said, “They were fully pardoned, and to me this is an opportunity to hear a firsthand account, and hear what they have to say. There’s a reason the president pardoned them, because I think it was a complicated matter that day. This isn’t an endorsement, just listening. I want to bring the Republican party of Monroe County together.”
German also emphasized that the meeting was not a Key West Yacht Club-sponsored event.
“We just rent the yacht club for meeting space,” he said. “This is not a yacht club event.”
Local Democratic activist Marilyn Kellner stood on the sidewalk outside the yacht club on North Roosevelt Boulevard photographing people who arrived for the meeting.
“This is who the Southernmost Republican Club is celebrating: Insurrectionists who assaulted police officers at our nation’s capital,” Kellner posted on Facebook. “‘On Jan. 6, 2021, their speaker, Bryan Bishop, “sprayed a Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officer directly in the face with an orange-colored chemical irritant and then sprayed a second MPD officer by aiming the spray at an upward angle in order to spray under the officer’s face shield,’ the U.S. Attorney’s Office press release stated.”
According to federal court documents detailing the Bishops’ case, FBI investigators cross-referenced photos of Bryan Bishop from his Florida, Minnesota and Idaho driver’s licenses and passport renewal application with public video, CCTV and police body camera footage recorded during the Capitol riot. Together, the complaint states, the imagery identified him as one of the individuals who assaulted members of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) on the Capitol’s West Terrace before entering and roaming the capitol building for roughly 17 minutes.
In addition, Bryan was allegedly identified as an individual labeled the #UnderHelmetSprayer in a wanted poster released by Sedition Hunters, a “global community of open-source intelligence investigators (OSINT) working together to assist the U.S. FBI and Washington D.C. Capitol Police in finding people who allegedly committed crimes in the January 6 capitol riots.”
His criminal complaint details several camera angles appearing to show him spraying two MPD officers in the face with a chemical irritant, hitting one directly before “aim(ing) at an upward angle in order to spray under (a second officer’s) face shield and directly into his face.”
Capitol footage video link:
https://keysweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/RPReplay_Final1691519711.mov
