Man who attacked officer on January 6 is sentenced to more than 12 years

A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced a rioter who brutally assaulted an officer defending the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to more than 12 years in prison. to future acts of political violence.

The 151-month sentence, handed down at a two-and-a-half-hour hearing in Washington’s Federal District Court, was one of the most severe so far in the Justice Department’s extensive investigation into the U.S. Capitol bombing. It grew out of one of the most heartbreaking episodes of the day, an attack on a District of Columbia police officer with a Taser-like weapon that left him unconscious and unable to return to work.

The defendant, Daniel Rodriguez, 40, who previously admitted driving from California to Washington to fight an armed struggle on behalf of former President Donald J. Trump, expressed some regret for his actions when he asked the judge for clemency. But after receiving his sentence, Mr. Rodriguez smiled and let out a defiant shout of “Trump has won!” before being ushered out of the room by federal marshals.

The judge, Amy Berman Jackson, rejected the defense’s arguments that Mr Rodriguez was the product of a difficult upbringing and that he had been a mostly law-abiding shop and warehouse worker before being radicalized by what she called the “irresponsible and knowingly false allegations that the elections have been stolen.”

Judge Jackson, raising her voice in disgust as she documented his actions in detail, said she was sympathetic to Mr Rodriguez’s claim that his extended absence was detrimental to his ailing mother, but she expressed the harsh sentence as a higher purpose of protecting democracy against the ongoing threats.

“The shadow of tyranny has not disappeared,” said Judge Jackson, who was appointed by President Barack Obama.

Patriotism, she told Mr. Rodriguez, “is loyalty to your country, not to a single head of state.”

Few of the more than 1,000 people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol were as violent as Mr. Rodriguez, a single, fatherless man who, according to his lawyer, “idolized” Mr. Trump and his MAGA movement.

Over the course of nearly two hours at the Capitol on Jan. 6, prosecutors say, Mr. Rodriguez sprayed a fire extinguisher at police, shoved at officers with a wooden pole, participated in a “heave-ho” attempt to force police to lines break and eventually attacked Washington Metropolitan Police Department Officer Michael Fanone — who had rushed to the scene when he heard police help — by striking him twice in the neck with an electric shock device in a crowd outside the building.

Even then, prosecutors say, Mr. Rodriguez kept going. He entered the Capitol and tried to stir up other rioters, they said, and tried to smash a window with a pole-like object he found inside. He also ransacked offices, the government says, and instructed others in the mafia to go through drawers to “search for information”.

When Mr. Rodriguez finally left the Capitol grounds, the prosecution said, he texted a group chat he created, called Patriots 45 MAGA Gang, that featured a gallows with the Capitol in the background. The text of the message read: “Unfortunately no Democrats found.”

“These people are fanatics,” Mr Fanone, who attended the hearing, said afterwards. “They must be held accountable.”

In court documents filed before sentencing, Mr. Rodriguez’s lawyers wrote that their client was one of millions defrauded by the former president, who “doubled on his lies and falsely stated that he had won.”

Mr. Rodriguez, who grew up without a father and never finished high school, was one of those people. He “greatly respected and idolized Trump,” the lawyers wrote, adding, “He saw the former president as the father he wished he had.”

But Mr. Rodriguez did little to help his own case in court. He deviated from that script during an extended 25-minute statement in which he seemed to cast in nostalgic terms the period leading up to the attack on the Capitol — a time when he bonded with fellow Trump supporters, practiced military drills through paintball to play and smoked marijuana, in his retelling.

“I did what I thought was right at the time,” he said.

Judge Jackson was not dismayed at the verdict. She said she was particularly confused by one thing Mr Rodriguez had just said – that he had armed himself in anticipation of a fight with law enforcement, to take part in a demonstration designed to protect police under a “Blue Lives Matter” flag.

“Today wasn’t the best day to say be armed and ready, because the police don’t always do the right thing,” she said, as one of his lawyers slumped in her chair.

Prosecutors say Mr. Rodriguez set up Patriots 45 MAGA Gang on Telegram in Fall 2020. But after the election — and Mr. Trump’s repeated lies that the outcome was marred by fraud — the group chat became “a breeding ground” for “plans for violence against the seat of the federal government.”

Those plans crystallized, prosecutors said, after Mr Trump posted a message on Twitter on Dec. 19, 2020, calling on his supporters to come to Washington for a “wild” protest on Jan. 6.

After the Tweet was posted, Mr. Rodriguez urged others in the chat to rent an RV and drive to Washington instead of flying so they could bring guns. He also encouraged chat members, prosecutors said, to arm themselves with knives, bear spray and even ax handles.

“There will be blood,” he wrote in chat the night before the attack on the Capitol. “Welcome to the Revolution.”

Edward Badalian, Mr. Rodriguez’s co-defendant and fellow chat member, was convicted in April of conspiracy and obstruction of official proceedings following a trial in court before Judge Jackson. Mr Rodriguez pleaded guilty to similar charges and assault in February.

Mr. Fanone, who has left the police force and stood out in court in his cowboy boots and neck tattoos, watched impassively as the prosecution played back video from his body camera showing him losing consciousness, being dragged to safety and feebly asking if officers had repelled the attackers.

But he couldn’t sit still as Mr. Rodriguez began his lengthy statement and left the courtroom around the time the defendant described his co-attackers as “a group of misfits” who bonded over “smoking weed.”

“We’re all a lot dumber just because we’ve been through that,” Mr. Fanone said in the hallway.