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A Pennsylvania man who beat a Washington, D.C., police officer with a Trump flag throughout the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol assault was sentenced Friday to 46 months in jail, federal officers mentioned.
Howard Richardson, 72, pleaded responsible earlier this yr to assaulting, resisting or impeding officers on the Capitol, in line with the Division of Justice.
Richardson waved a flag emblazoned with Trump’s title when he breached a restricted space of the Capitol, then he used the pole to strike a police officer a number of occasions, officers mentioned.
“He raised it and forcefully swung it downward to strike an officer with the Metropolitan Police Division who was standing behind a metallic barricade,” in line with a Justice Division assertion. “Richardson then struck the officer two extra occasions, utilizing sufficient drive to interrupt the flagpole.”
After that, Richardson then pushed a “giant metallic signal right into a line of regulation enforcement officers” together with different rioters, officers mentioned.
Richardson instructed the FBI he was “pissed off” in regards to the 2020 presidential election and indignant about alleged voter fraud, NBC Information reported.
“This can be a critical offense,” Choose Colleen Kollar-Kotelly mentioned when she sentenced Richardson. She mentioned a video of the conflict made it clear that Richardson was “very indignant” when he swung his flagpole with the Trump flag at an officer.
“The intent must be to injure the officer, there’s no different purpose to do it,” she added, in line with NBC. “It was an rebel, it was not a protest, and definitely not a peaceable one.”
Richardson was arrested in November 2021 and pleaded responsible in April.
After he serves his almost four-year jail sentence, Richardson will even be topic to a few years of supervised launch. He should additionally pay $2,000 in restitution.
The sentence is without doubt one of the longest handed down out thus far within the Jan. 6 rebel.
Earlier this month, Thomas Robertson, an off-duty Virginia police officer who stormed the Capitol with a fellow officer, was sentenced to greater than seven years in jail, matching the longest jail sentence thus far amongst a whole lot of Capitol riot circumstances.
However Justice Division officers are in search of the longest jail sentence but towards a Jan. 6 rioter, 17 years, for ex-police officer and former Marine Thomas Webster, who was discovered responsible in Might of 5 felonies and a misdemeanor for his participation within the Capitol siege, together with assaulting, resisting or impeding an officer utilizing a lethal or harmful weapon, and fascinating in an act of bodily violence on Capitol grounds.
The sentence can be almost double the longest jail sentence handed down by a courtroom in a Jan. 6 case up to now, CBS Information reported.
Webster’s sentencing is scheduled for subsequent Friday.
Greater than 860 individuals have been arrested since Jan. 6 in reference to the assault, in line with the Justice Division. Greater than 260 of them have been charged with assaulting or impeding regulation enforcement.
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