WASHINGTON — A retired New York City Police Department officer who was convicted of a number of felonies for attacking a D.C. cop with a flag pole on Jan. 6 after which tackling the officer to the bottom and trying to tear off his gasoline masks was sentenced to 10 years in federal jail on Thursday.
Thomas Webster was sentenced by Judge Amit P. Mehta to the longest sentence but in a Jan. 6 case.
Webster, 56, was convicted by a jury in May after they decided he was mendacity on the stand when he tried to persuade them he was making an attempt to assist the officer he assaulted to “see my hands” when he grabbed the officer’s gasoline masks after he tackled him to the bottom.
No one needs to be “gleeful” that Webster was going through 17.5 years in federal jail, Mehta stated Thursday.
“What you did that day, it is hard to really put into words,” Mehta advised Webster. “I still remain shocked every single time I see .”
Mehta stated Webster was “the first aggressor” in his confrontation with the D.C. police officer, and “all hell broke loose” on the police line when Webster confirmed up at that a part of the police line.
“Nothing can explain or justify Mr. Webster’s rage,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Hava Arin Levenson Mirell advised the choose. “Webster is one of the rioters who should have known better.”
“No one knows better than a former cop how dangerous it was on Jan. 6,” the federal prosecutor stated, saying that Webster’s service made his habits “particularly heinous.”
Even if he didn’t know higher than “to believe Trump’s lie,” he knew higher than to assault officers, Mirell stated.
“He feels entitled to do what he wants as a former police officer,” Mirell stated. Webster went “old-school” and “rogue” on Jan. 6, she stated, including that “instigated violence” and was clearly anticipating a violent conflict.
The Justice Department argued, because the jury concluded, that Webster was very clearly mendacity on the stand, calling his claims that the officer he attacked instigated the struggle, “preposterous.” It would have been “absolutely insane” for the officer who Webster assaulted to have invited Webster to struggle him, the prosecutor stated.
The arguments that Webster and his group made “could not be more at odds with his testimony,” Mehta stated.
“I take no pleasure in doing this,” Mehta stated when imposing the sentence, saying that Webster “constructed an alternative truth” on the stand.
“The video doesn’t lie,” Mehta stated. “The jury saw through it, I saw through it, it wasn’t that hard. And I’m sorry you thought you could get up there and suggest otherwise.”
Webster’s attorneys had sought a decrease sentence, arguing in a submitting earlier this week that he suffered from PTSD from his profession as a police officer and blamed his actions on Jan. 6, partially, on “flashbacks.”
Thomas Robertson, one other former officer, was sentenced to over seven years in federal jail final month, as was Texas extremist Guy Reffitt.