(CNN)A Florida man who enthusiastically attacked police at the US Capitol on January 6 with a hearth extinguisher, a wood plank and a pole used to be sentenced to extra than five years in penitentiary on Friday, the longest sentence for a Capitol rioter so a long way.
Robert Scott Palmer is the principle person to be sentenced for the legal of assaulting an officer with a foul weapon. His 63-month sentence would possibly perhaps perhaps field a benchmark for the extra than 140 others who face the a similar cost.
“Each day we’re listening to about experiences of antidemocratic factions, of us plotting doubtless violence in 2024,” District Mediate Tanya Chutkan said as she handed down the sentence. “It has to be made particular that making an strive to end the quiet transition of vitality, assaulting law enforcement, goes to be met with particular punishment. Now not staying at dwelling, no longer staring at Netflix, no longer doing what you agree with been doing sooner than you get arrested.”
Palmer used to be first publicly identified by online sleuths, who tracked him down through photos and video of Palmer in an American flag jacket brawling initiate air the Capitol. Primarily essentially based on his plea settlement, Palmer sprayed a hearth extinguisher at a line of police and twice threw the empty canister. When he refused to support down, Palmer used to be shot within the abdominal with a rubber bullet.
“I ponder if the of us which would possibly perhaps perhaps be in most cases sooner than me,” Chutkan said of Dusky and minority defendants she presides over, “if they’d tried to storm the Capitol that day, would they’ve been met with rubber bullets. I believe no longer.”
Chutkan, an appointee of archaic President Barack Obama and archaic public defender, has emerged as doubtless the harshest mediate for January 6 defendants. Seven conditions in entrance of her agree with reached sentencing, and all seven agree with obtained prison time ranging from 14 days to extra than five years at the support of bars.
All over the listening to, Palmer said that he seen TV host Rachel Maddow enact a section about his case on MSNBC and used to be “fearful, completely devastated to peek myself on there. Appropriate to peek the coldness and the calculation going up those steps with the fireplace extinguisher to spray those officers.”
Palmer furthermore said in a letter to the mediate that he now realizes archaic President Donald Trump “lied” to supporters concerning the election.
“They saved spitting out the false fable about a stolen election and the procedure it used to be ‘our accountability’ to face up to tyranny,” Palmer wrote. “Limited did I stamp that they agree with been the tyrannical ones fervent to preserve onto vitality at any cost even by setting up the chaos the knew would occur with such rhetoric.”
