A Pennsylvania man who beat a Washington, D.C., police officer with a Trump flag through the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol assault was sentenced Friday to 46 months in jail, federal officers stated.
Howard Richardson, 72, pleaded responsible earlier this 12 months to assaulting, resisting or impeding officers on the Capitol, based on the Division of Justice.
Richardson waved a flag emblazoned with Trump’s identify when he breached a restricted space of the Capitol, then he used the pole to strike a police officer a number of occasions, officers stated.
“He raised it and forcefully swung it downward to strike an officer with the Metropolitan Police Division who was standing behind a steel barricade,” based on a Justice Division assertion. “Richardson then struck the officer two extra occasions, utilizing sufficient pressure to interrupt the flagpole.”
After that, Richardson then pushed a “massive steel signal right into a line of regulation enforcement officers” together with different rioters, officers stated.
Richardson informed the FBI he was “pissed off” in regards to the 2020 presidential election and indignant about alleged voter fraud, NBC Information reported.
“It is a critical offense,” Choose Colleen Kollar-Kotelly stated when she sentenced Richardson. She stated 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 needs to be to injure the officer, there’s no different cause to do it,” she added, based on 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 may even be topic to 3 years of supervised launch. He should additionally pay $2,000 in restitution.
The sentence is likely one of the longest handed down out to this point 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 to this point amongst a whole lot of Capitol riot circumstances.
However Justice Division officers are searching for 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 Could 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 could be almost double the longest jail sentence handed down by a court docket in a Jan. 6 case thus far, 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, based on the Justice Division. Greater than 260 of them have been charged with assaulting or impeding regulation enforcement.
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