WASHINGTON — A Jan. 6 defendant who introduced a Confederate flag to the Capitol and wore an “I ❤️ TRUMP” beanie as he assaulted police officers with chemical spray, in part blinding two of them for hours, was once sentenced to 30 months in prison on Monday.
Isreal Easterday, 23, was once arrested in Florida in December 2022 and was once discovered responsible in October on a number of counts, together with criminal fees of civil dysfunction and assaulting officers.
U.S. District Court Chief Judge James E. Boasberg sentenced Easterday to 30 months in prison in addition to 500 hours of neighborhood carrier, alongside with $2,000 in restitution.
The executive sought 151 months — or greater than 12.5 years — in federal prison for Easterday, announcing his “felonious conduct” was once “part of a massive riot that almost succeeded in preventing the certification vote from being carried out, frustrating the peaceful transition of Presidential power, and throwing the United States into a Constitutional crisis.”
Prosecutors known as the Confederate fight flag — which Easterday introduced as much as the jap doorways of the U.S. Capitol the place Abraham Lincoln’s frame handed thru after his assassination in 1865 — “an established symbol of racism” in addition to “a symbol of treason, defiance of the law, and insurrection.”
Easterday’s protection attorneys (*6*) he got here to Washington after his uncle “invited him to tag along with a group of fellow Trump supporters.” They stated Easterday was once homeschooled and “everything he knew was filtered through the lens of his parents” when he got here to the Capitol. Easterday, they stated, “plainly did not fully understand what the Confederate flag signified” and even Googled “what does the rebel flag represent” on the afternoon of Jan. 6.
Prosecutors stated Easterday “was part of the mob that first breached the police line on the East side of the Capitol,” and that he waved his Confederate flag when he “entered the restricted area, pushed his way through the mob, and climbed up to the top landing” outdoor the east rotunda doorways.
“There, he acquired a can of pepper spray and used it to assault U.S. Capitol Police (‘USCP’) Officer Joshua Pollitt, who was guarding the East Rotunda Doors, by spraying the chemical irritant directly into Officer Pollitt’s face from just an arm’s length away. Officer Pollitt collapsed moments after Easterday sprayed him, and experienced excruciating pain and partial blindness for hours,” prosecutors wrote. “After this attack, Easterday acquired a second can of pepper spray from another rioter and used it to assault a different group of USCP officers guarding the East Rotunda Doors, striking USCP Officer Miguel Acevedo, and causing him to experience excruciating pain and partial blindness for hours, just like Officer Pollitt.”
Easterday then breached the development, and pulled different rioters within, prosecutors stated. The subsequent day, “in an effort to hide evidence of his guilt, Easterday wiped photographs, posts, and communications from his Facebook account,” they stated.
Over 1,387 Capitol assault defendants had been charged, and prosecutors have secured greater than 984 convictions. While masses of low-level Jan. 6 rioters have won probationary sentences, greater than 520 had been sentenced to classes of incarceration starting from a few days in the back of bars to 22 years in federal prison. There are simplest about 15 defendants in pretrial custody, that means they have not been convicted of a crime, however a pass judgement on decided they’re both a risk to the neighborhood or a possibility of flight.