Judge questions Jan. 6 rioters’ treatment
Says Black Lives Matter protesters are on similar level
Rejecting the recommendation of prosecutors, a federal judge sentenced a Jan. 6 rioter to probation on Friday and suggested that the Justice Department was being too hard on those who broke into the Capitol compared to the people arrested during anti-racism protests following George Floyd’s murder.
U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden questioned why federal prosecutors had not brought more cases against those accused in 2020 summertime protests, reading out statistics on riot cases in the nation’s capital that were not prosecuted.
“I think the U.S. attorney would have more credibility if it was even-handed in its concern about riots and mobs in this city,” McFadden said during Danielle Doyle’s sentencing for entering the Capitol on Jan. 6 with a throng of other rioters. Prosecutors recommended two months of home confinement for Doyle, who is from Oklahoma.
The statements by McFadden, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, were a major departure from the other federal judges overseeing insurrection cases so far, despite other Trump appointees on the court assigned to the hundreds of cases. They have generally discussed seriousness of the crime and its unique place in American history – different from other violent free speech protests because it sought to disrupt the peaceful transition of power.
The Associated Press analyzed more than 300 criminal cases stemming from the protests incited by Floyd’s murder, showing that many leftist rioters had received substantial sentences, rebutting the argument that proTrump defendants were treated more harshly than Black Lives Matter protesters.
As McFadden sentenced Doyle, he said he thought she was “acting like all those looters and rioters last year. That’s because looters and rioters decided the law did not apply to them.”
Despite these concerns, McFadden said Doyle’s behavior was not excusable. He called it a “national embarrassment,” and again likened it to the police brutality protests following the death of George Floyd last year that made “us all feel less safe.”
By contrast, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg on Friday sentenced another rioter, Andrew Ryan Bennett, to three months of home confinement, accepting the request by prosecutors.