A federal choose on Wednesday sentenced a rioter who savagely assaulted an officer defending the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to greater than 12 years in jail, calling him a “one-man army of hate” whose extreme punishment may act as a deterrent to future acts of political violence.
The 151-month sentence, handed down at a two-and-a-half-hour listening to in Federal District Court in Washington, was one of many stiffest to this point within the Justice Department’s sprawling investigation of the Capitol assault. It stemmed from one of the wrenching episodes of the day, an assault on a District of Columbia police officer with a Taser-like weapon that left him unconscious and unable to return to his duties.
The defendant, Daniel Rodriguez, 40, who had beforehand admitted to driving from California to Washington to do armed battle on behalf of former President Donald J. Trump, expressed some remorse for his actions as he requested the choose for leniency. But after receiving his sentence, Mr. Rodriguez smiled and set free a defiant shout of “Trump won!” earlier than being led out of the room by federal marshals.
The choose, Amy Berman Jackson, rejected protection arguments that Mr. Rodriguez was the product of a tough upbringing and that he had been a principally law-abiding retail and warehouse employee earlier than he grew to become radicalized by what she known as Mr. Trump’s “irresponsible and knowingly false claims that the election was stolen.”
Judge Jackson, her voice rising with disgust as she documented his actions intimately, stated she was sympathetic to Mr. Rodriguez’s declare that his prolonged absence has been dangerous to his ailing mom, however she solid the stiff sentence as serving the next goal of safeguarding democracy from the persevering with threats.
“The shadow of tyranny has not gone away,” stated Judge Jackson, who was appointed by President Barack Obama.
Patriotism, she instructed Mr. Rodriguez, “is loyalty to your country, not to a single head of state.”
Few among the many greater than 1,000 individuals who have been charged in reference to the Capitol assault had been as violent as Mr. Rodriguez, a single, fatherless man who, in keeping with his lawyer, “idolized” Mr. Trump and his MAGA motion.
Over the course of practically two hours on the Capitol on Jan. 6, prosecutors say, Mr. Rodriguez sprayed a fireplace extinguisher on the police, shoved at officers with a wood pole, took half in a “heave ho” effort to interrupt police traces and finally assaulted Officer Michael Fanone of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington — who had rushed to the scene when he heard legislation enforcement requires assist — by hitting him twice within the neck with an electroshock system in a crowd outdoors the constructing.
Even then, prosecutors say, Mr. Rodriguez stored going. He entered the Capitol and sought to rile up different rioters, they stated, and tried to smash a window with a pole-like object he discovered inside. He additionally ransacked places of work, the federal government says, and instructed others within the mob to undergo drawers to “look for intel.”
When Mr. Rodriguez lastly left the Capitol grounds, prosecutors say, he despatched a textual content message to a gaggle chat he had created known as Patriots 45 MAGA Gang, displaying a gallows with the Capitol within the background. The textual content of the message learn, “No Democrats found unfortunately.”
“These people are zealots,” Mr. Fanone, who attended the listening to, stated afterward. “They need to be held accountable.”
In court docket papers filed earlier than the sentencing, Mr. Rodriguez’s legal professionals wrote that their shopper was certainly one of hundreds of thousands duped by the previous president, who “doubled down on his lies and falsely declared that he had won.”
Mr. Rodriguez, who grew up with no father and by no means accomplished highschool, was a type of individuals. He “deeply respected and idolized Trump,” the legal professionals wrote, including, “He saw the former president as the father he wished he had.”
But Mr. Rodriguez did little to assist his personal trigger within the courtroom. He veered from that script throughout a rambling 25-minute assertion through which he appeared to solid the interval main as much as the assault on the Capitol in nostalgic phrases — a time when he bonded with fellow Trump supporters, practiced army drills by taking part in paintball and smoked marijuana, in his retelling.
“I did what I thought was right at the time,” he stated.
Judge Jackson, in passing sentence, was not swayed. She stated she was significantly confounded by one factor Mr. Rodriguez had simply stated — that he had armed himself in anticipation of a struggle with legislation enforcement, to take part in an illustration meant to safeguard the police below a “Blue Lives Matter” banner.
“Today was not the best day to say you had to be armed and ready because police don’t always do the right thing,” she stated, as certainly one of his legal professionals slumped in her seat.
Prosecutors say that Mr. Rodriguez arrange Patriots 45 MAGA Gang on Telegram within the fall of 2020. But after the election — and Mr. Trump’s repeated lies concerning the end result being marred by fraud — the group chat grew to become “a breeding ground” for “plans for violence against the seat of the federal government.”
Those plans crystallized, prosecutors stated, after Mr. Trump posted a message on Twitter on Dec. 19, 2020, summoning his supporters to Washington for a “wild” protest on Jan. 6.
After the Tweet was posted, Mr. Rodriguez urged others within the chat to lease an R.V. and drive to Washington as an alternative of flying in order that they might carry weapons. He additionally inspired chat members, prosecutors stated, to arm themselves with knives, bear spray, even ax handles.
“There will be blood,” he wrote within the chat on the evening earlier than the Capitol assault. “Welcome to the revolution.”
Edward Badalian, Mr. Rodriguez’s co-defendant and fellow group chat member, was convicted of conspiracy and obstruction of an official continuing in April after a bench trial in entrance of Judge Jackson. Mr. Rodriguez pleaded responsible to related expenses and assault in February.
Mr. Fanone, who has left the police drive and was conspicuous within the courtroom in his cowboy boots and neck tattoos, watched impassively because the prosecution performed video from his physique digital camera displaying him shedding consciousness, being dragged to security and asking, faintly, if officers had repelled the attackers.
But he couldn’t sit nonetheless when Mr. Rodriguez started his lengthy assertion, and bolted from the courtroom across the time the defendant described his fellow attackers as “a group of misfits” who bonded over “smoking weed” collectively.
“We are all a lot dumber for just having lived through that,” Mr. Fanone stated within the hall.
Source: www.nytimes.com