Man will get record-setting 14 yr sentence for operate in Capitol assault, longest sentence however

By Associated Press: A Kentucky man with a protracted felony doc was sentenced Friday to a record-setting 14 years in jail for attacking cops with pepper spray and a chair as he stormed the U.S. Capitol collectively together with his partner.

Peter Schwartz’s jail sentence is the longest up to now amongst an entire lot of Capitol riot circumstances. The determine who sentenced Schwartz moreover handed down the sooner longest sentence — 10 years — to a retired New York Police Department officer who assaulted a police officer outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Prosecutors had actually useful a jail sentence of 24 years and 6 months for Schwartz, a welder.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta sentenced Schwartz to 14 years and two months in jail, adopted by three years of supervised launch.

Mehta said Schwartz was a “soldier against democracy” who participated in “the kind of mayhem, chaos that had never been seen in the country’s history.”

“You are not a political prisoner,” the determine instructed him. “You’re not somebody who is standing up against injustice or fighting against an autocratic regime.”

Schwartz briefly addressed the determine sooner than learning his sentence, saying, “I do sincerely regret the damage that Jan. 6 has caused to so many people and their lives.”

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The determine said he didn’t think about Schwartz’s assertion, noting his lack of remorse.

“You took it upon yourself to try and injure multiple police officers that day,” Mehta said.

Schwartz was armed with a wooden tire knocker when he and his then-wife, Shelly Stallings, joined totally different rioters in overwhelming a line of cops on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace, the place he threw a folding chair at officers.

“By throwing that chair, Schwartz directly contributed to the fall of the police line that enabled rioters to flood forward and take over the entire terrace,” prosecutor Jocelyn Bond wrote in a courtroom docket submitting.

Schwartz, 49, moreover armed himself with a police-issued “super soaker” canister of pepper spray and sprayed it at retreating officers. Advancing to a tunnel entrance, Schwartz coordinated with two totally different rioters, Markus Maly and Jeffrey Brown, to spray an orange liquid in direction of officers clashing with the mob.

“While the stream of liquid did not directly hit any officer, its effect was to heighten the danger to the officers in that tunnel,” Bond wrote.

Before leaving, Schwartz joined a “heave ho” push in opposition to police inside the tunnel.

Stallings pleaded accountable closing yr to riot-related prices and was sentenced closing month to 2 years of incarceration.

Schwartz was tried with co-defendants Maly and Brown. In December, a jury convicted all three of assault prices and totally different felony offenses.

Mehta sentenced Brown closing Friday to 4 years and 6 months in jail. Maly is scheduled to be sentenced June 9.

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Schwartz’s attorneys requested a jail sentence of 4 years and 6 months. They said his actions on Jan. 6 had been motivated by a “misunderstanding” regarding the 2020 presidential election. Then-President Donald Trump and his allies unfold baseless conspiracy theories that Democrats stole the election from the Republican incumbent.

“There remain many grifters out there who remain free to continue propagating the ‘great lie’ that Trump won the election, Donald Trump being among the most prominent. Mr. Schwartz is not one of these individuals; he knows he was wrong,” his safety attorneys wrote.

Prosecutors said Schwartz has bragged about his participation inside the riot, confirmed no remorse and claimed that his prosecution was politically motivated. He referred to the Capitol assault as a result of the “opening of a war” in a Facebook publish a day after the riot.

“I was there and whether people will acknowledge it or not we are now at war,” Schwartz wrote.

Schwartz has raised over $71,000 from a web-based advertising and marketing marketing campaign entitled “Patriot Pete Political Prisoner in DC.” Prosecutors requested Mehta to order Schwartz to pay a beautiful equaling the amount raised by his advertising and marketing marketing campaign, arguing that he shouldn’t income from collaborating inside the riot.

Schwartz was on probation when he joined the Jan. 6 riot. His felony doc includes a “jaw-dropping” 38 prior convictions since 1991, “several of which involved assaulting or threatening officers or other authority figures,” Bond wrote.

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Schwartz was working as a welder in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, sooner than his arrest in February 2021, nevertheless he considers his residence to be in Owensboro, Kentucky, in response to his attorneys.

More than 100 cops had been injured in the midst of the riot. More than 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes related to Jan. 6. Nearly 500 of them have been sentenced, with over half getting phrases of imprisonment.

The 10-year jail sentence that Mehta handed down in September to retired NYPD officer Thomas Webster had remained the longest until Friday. Webster had used a metal flagpole to assault an officer after which tackled the similar officer as a result of the mob superior in direction of the Capitol.