Ex-NYPD officer Thomas Webster sentenced to 10 years in prison

WASHINGTON — A federal choose sentenced a former NYPD officer and U.S. Marine Corps veteran to 10 years in prison Thursday – handing down the longest sentence to date in a Capitol riot case.

Thomas Webster, 56, of New York, confirmed no response as U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta ordered him to serve 120 months in prison for assaulting a D.C. Police officer and straight contributing to breaking a tenuously held police line on the west aspect of the U.S. Capitol Building  on Jan. 6.

“If you look at the before and after of that video,” Mehta stated, “it was an intact police line. It’s not until you arrived that all hell broke loose.”

The sentence places Webster, who served for 20 years as a New York City police officer, on the prime of a rising record of felony defendants in Jan. 6 circumstances ordered to serve substantial time behind bars. Both Texas Three Percenter Guy Reffitt and former Rocky Mount, Virginia, police officer Thomas Robertson have been ordered to serve 87 months behind bars — beforehand the longest sentence a Jan. 6 case — and two different males accused of assaulting police, Mark Ponder and Robert Palmer, have been each sentenced to 63 months in prison.

Prosecutors requested Mehta to sentence Webster to greater than 17 years behind bars, saying he’d proven no regret or contrition for utilizing a Marine Corps flag after which his naked palms to repeatedly assault DC Police Officer Noah Rathbun. Prosecutors additionally stated Webster had lied on the stand when he claimed at trial Rathbun — who he referred to as a “rogue cop” — had instigated the assault.

Mehta stopped wanting ruling outright that Webster lied, saying he’d already acquired an obstruction enhancement for deleting images from his telephone, however famous that the sentencing memo Webster’s lawyer, James Monroe, submitted “could not be more at odds with his testimony.”

“There’s no doubt what you got up and said that day was utterly fanciful and incredible,” Mehta stated.

Mehta additionally wrestled with the potential sentencing disparity between the  prison time period prosecutors needed for Webster and the 63-month sentences acquired by Ponder and Palmer, who each assaulted police repeatedly with weapons (each Ponder and Palmer accepted plea offers, ensuing in a decreased sentencing vary). The DOJ compounded the problem by requesting an uncommon physique armor enhancement for Webster, who wore his NYPD-issued bulletproof vest to the riot. Mehta finally granted the enhancement, however instructed he supposed to mitigate its “draconian” impact of including greater than six years to Webster’s sentencing guideline. Because Webster was already going through a suggestion vary operating to the sting of the utmost allowed by probably the most critical cost in his case anyway, Mehta stated the enhancement finally had little impact on his determination.

Webster was convicted by a jury in May of six counts, 5 of them felonies. During trial, prosecutors confirmed video of Webster “elbowing” his approach by the massed crowd on Jan. 6 to the place DC and U.S. Capitol Police officers have been holding a fringe behind a line of motorcycle racks. Body cam video confirmed him instantly screaming at a type of officers, Rathbun, earlier than initiating what prosecutors described as a “rage-filled” assault inside seconds of arriving on the police line. Video confirmed Webster repeatedly swinging a metallic pole at Rathbun and one other officer earlier than charging by the barricade and tackling Rathbun to the bottom, the place he tried to rip off his gasoline masks and helmet. Rathbun testified that Webster’s assault choked him and left him gasping for air as he felt different rioters kicking him whereas on the bottom.

After the assault, Webster made his approach to the Lower West Terrace, the place he urged viewers of one other rioter’s livestream to, “Send more patriots!”

In his sentencing memo, Webster’s lawyer Monroe requested for a major downward variance, amounting to the 127 days Webster had served in jail and greater than a 12 months on dwelling confinement, citing his service as a Marine and a NYPD officer of 20 years. Despite Webster’s testimony throughout trial — when he repeatedly blamed Rathbun for instigating the assault and made claims that have been unsupported, and on a number of events straight contradicted, by video proof — Monroe described his shopper Thursday as a “good, decent man” who had been mislead by former President Donald Trump’s need to cling to energy. 

Monroe stated the assault was a blemish on Webster’s in any other case sterling life and described it as “46 seconds of delusion that he could have some say over who was going to be the next president of the United States.”

Webster himself took the stand briefly, saying he revered the jury’s determination and wished he had by no means come to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6. He additionally apologized to Rathbun, who was current in the courtroom.

“I want to apologize to you and your family,” Webster stated. “I know how that impacts your family. I’m sorry.”

Before delivering his sentence, Mehta stated he agreed with Webster on one level.

“I do wish you hadn’t come to Washington, D.C.,” he stated. “I do wish you had stayed home in New York and not come out to the Capitol that day. Because all of us would be far better off.”

Webster’s 10-year sentence, would have been longer, the choose stated, had he not acquired credit score for his greater than twenty years of service as a Marine and police officer. But Mehta, who has described defendants in different circumstances as “pawns” of those that unfold lies concerning the 2020 election, stated Webster additionally introduced a critical want to deter others who would possibly, like him, resort to political violence.

“We simply cannot have a country where people on the losing side of an election think they can use violence and physical force to undo that,” Mehta stated.

Mehta additionally once more admonished Webster for his testimony on the stand, saying it was clear he hadn’t been truthful.

“The jury saw through it. I saw through it. It wasn’t that hard,” Mehta stated. “I’m sorry you thought you could get up there and say otherwise.”

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