Prosecutors seek long sentence for Georgia man on Jan. 6 charges

Federal prosecutors have recommended that a Georgia man charged with some of the most violent behavior during the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot be sentenced to more than eight years in prison.

During the sometimesbrutal conflict between rioters and police on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace, Jack Wade

Whitton Jr., 33, was photographed and caught on video attacking Capitol Police officers defending a tunnel leading to the building’s basement, where members of Congress were being evacuated.

Photos show Whitton, of Locust Grove, striking police with a metal crutch and dragging a fallen officer into the crowd.

“You’re gonna die tonight!” Whitton, a former personal trainer and fencing contractor, yelled while fighting with police, according to court documents quoting police body camera footage.

Later, in an Instagram message to an acquaintance, Whitton bragged about the officer he pulled into the thick of the mob.

“This is from a bad cop,” Whitton wrote alongside pictures of his bloody hands. “Yea I fed him to the people. Idk his status. And don’t care tbh.”

The officer was badly bruised but survived. He was led out of the crowd by some rioters while others continued to beat him as he retreated, prosecutors wrote in a 41-page sentencing memo filed earlier this week.

The memo recommended Whitton be sentenced to 97 months in prison and fined nearly $61,685, the exact amount Whitton raised on the Christianoriented fundraising site Givesendgo, which has hosted fundraising pages for dozens of people from the mob of Donald Trump supporters who were charged in the Capitol violence.

“Whitton should not be able to ‘capitalize’ on his participation in the January 6 riot in this way,” prosecutors wrote.

Prosecutors said police fought for two hours to control the tunnel entrance and had managed to push rioters out when Whitton and co-defendant Justin Jersey forced their way to the front of the crowd and renewed the attack.

“It is clear from video footage of the LWT

(Lower West Terrace) during these assaults that it was Whitton’s attack on the police line from the south, along with Jersey’s contemporaneous attack on Officer A.W. from the north, that ignited the rageful onslaught of violence that followed,” the prosecution wrote.

Whitton, who has been in custody since his April 2021 arrest, pleaded guilty to assaulting a police officer more than a year ago in a deal worked out with prosecutors. His sentencing has been delayed as his eight co-defendants either worked out their own deals or took their charges to trial.

Whitton is finally scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 4 in Washington before U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras. If the judge agrees with prosecutors, it would be the longest prison stint, by far, of any Georgian so far charged in the riot.

The maximum sentence for assaulting a Capitol Police officer is 20 years.