APOPKA, Fla. — Central Florida resident and former police officer Nathan Tuck was preparing to report to prison in March after pleading guilty to a pair of crimes connected to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

But this week, President Donald Trump followed through with a promise to pardon those convicted in connection with the attack — even those who violently attacked police officers. Tuck, 32, was among the roughly 1,500 people who received a pardon from Trump.

Tuck said he looks back on Jan. 6, 2021 fondly.

“No, I don’t regret it all. It was one of the best days of my life,” he said. ”I’m just a regular guy. I have a son. I have a wife. I have a family.”

While Tuck is a former officer with the Apopka Police Department, he says he quit months before the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

“I learned a lot and I’m very thankful for it, but I quit because I was just kind of disillusioned with it and kind of just done with being in law enforcement,” he said.

Tuck, who Federal authorities accused of being a member of the Space Coast chapter of the Proud Boys, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder, and a misdemeanor charge of entering and remaining in a restricted area. He was sentenced to 14 months in prison for his role in the riots.

He says it was his political beliefs, not his guilt, that was about to put him behind bars before Trump’s pardon.

“I pled guilty to that because you can’t win as a right winger,” he said. “You can’t beat a jury in D.C.”

While Tuck said he believes the presidential election of 2020 was stolen, he claimed that he was not at the U.S. Capitol to stop the certification. He said he was in Washington to combat “antifascist leftists attacking Trump supporters for no reason.”

“Innocent mothers, fathers, kids and they were doing it for years and nobody was doing anything about it,” he said. “So, I had an opportunity to go there solely for the purpose to protect Trump supporters and families against these deranged leftists.”

According to the Justice Department, on Jan. 6, 2021, Tuck went to the Capitol with a group of approximately 100 Proud Boys. 

“Tuck and his co-defendants remained in the West Plaza for nearly an hour. As officers on the west side of the Capitol were overrun, they traversed the north lawn to the east side of the Capitol,” a Jan. 10, statement from the U.S. Department of Justice said. “The group encountered a line of officers who were attempting to stop the crowd from advancing to the building. At approximately 2:16 p.m., the group, including the defendant, breached the line of officers, and Defendant advanced toward the Capitol building with his co-defendants Kevin Tuck, Arthur Jackman, and Eddie George.”

The statement went on to say: “They then approached the building and the Senate Carriage Door at approximately 2:18 p.m. After arriving at the door, Nathaniel Tuck moved to the front of the crowd and attempted to enter the building as police officers were attempting to remove rioters from inside the building. Nathaniel Tuck was the sole member of his co-defendants who successfully pushed his way past a line of multiple Capitol Police officers, making physical contact with at least one officer as he did so. Nathaniel Tuck spent most of the next hour inside the Capitol building, where he berated officers, shouting at them and calling them ‘communists.’ After leaving the building at approximately 3:12 p.m., Tuck posed for a celebratory photograph on Capitol grounds with his co-defendants and other Proud Boys, then bragged in a text message conversation with family members that he had “[f]ought the police.” 

Tuck — who said “Politics won’t save us. Violence is the only way we will win,” in a text message to his father in March 2021 — disputed federal authorities’ version of events.

“Yeah, when I say we fought the police, I was talking about the crowd,” he said. “As I meant, there were scuffles with people being pushed and stuff. It wasn’t where it was physical where we were punching police officers. At least the people that I was with.”

Tuck said he wants to move on with his life now, but mentioned what he described as “massive litigation” that people convicted of crimes connected to the Capitol attack are planning against the federal government. He declined to elaborate.