Capitol rioters enter 1st guilty pleas to assaulting police on Jan. 6
A New Jersey gym owner and a Washington state man on Friday became the first people charged in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol to plead guilty to assaulting a law enforcement officer during the deadly siege.
The pair of plea deals with federal prosecutors could be a benchmark for dozens of other cases in which Capitol rioters are charged with attacking police.
An attorney for Scott Kevin Fairlamb, a former mixed martial arts fighter who owned Fairlamb Fit gym in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, said prosecutors are seeking a sentencing guideline range of about 31⁄2 to 41⁄4 years in prison. But the judge isn’t bound by that recommendation.
Later on Friday, the same judge in Washington, D.C., ordered Devlyn Thompson to be jailed in Seattle after he pleaded guilty to assaulting a police officer with a dangerous weapon, a baton. Thompson, 28, of Puyallup, Washington, had been free since his participation in the Capitol riot.
The pleas come less than two weeks after a group of police officers testified at a congressional hearing about their harrowing confrontations with the mob of insurrectionists. Five officers who were at the Capitol that day have died, four of them by suicide. The Justice Department has said that rioters assaulted approximately 140 police officers on Jan. 6.
Fairlamb, 44, whose brother is a U.S. Secret Service agent, was one of the very first rioters to breach the Capitol after other rioters smashed windows using riot shields and kicked out a locked door, according to federal prosecutors. After leaving the building, Fairlamb harassed a line of police officers, shouting in their faces and blocking their progress through the mob, prosecutors wrote in a court filing.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth set a sentencing date of Sept. 27 for both Thompson and Fairlamb, who has been jailed since his Jan. 22 arrest at his home in Stockholm, New Jersey.
Thompson wasn’t arrested after he was charged last month with one count of assaulting a Metropolitan Police officer. His attorneys said in a court filing that he has autism spectrum disorder. They cited that as a reason for keeping him out of jail while awaiting sentencing.
It wasn’t immediately clear what prosecutors estimate the sentencing guidelines should be for Thompson’s case.
Fairlamb pleaded guilty to two counts, obstruction of an official proceeding and assaulting a Metropolitan Police Department officer. The counts carry a maximum of more than 20 years in prison.
Another video captured Fairlamb shoving and punching a police officer in the head after he left the Capitol, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit.
“As a former MMA fighter, the defendant was well aware of the injury he could have inflicted on (the officer),” prosecutors wrote. “His actions and words on that day all indicate a specific intent to obstruct a congressional proceeding through fear, intimidation, and violence, including violence against uniformed police officers.”