Prosecutors seek 13 months in prison for Capitol rioter
Federal prosecutors are seeking more than a year in prison for a retired Chicago firefighter who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with a far-right militia group and tried to force his way through a line of police officers to an area where some lawmakers had taken shelter.
Joseph Pavlik, 66, of Chicago, “came to the Capitol prepared for violence” and “fanned the flames of the mob” through his actions that day, prosecutors wrote in a memo filed Friday seeking a sentence of 13 months behind bars.
Pavlik, who retired from the Chicago Fire Department in 2013 after a 33-year career as a firefighter, pleaded guilty in August to one count of entering restricted grounds with a dangerous weapon.
His attorney, Lawrence Beaumont, filed a memo of his own Friday evening asking for a term of probation, calling Pavlik a dedicated public servant whose participation in the events of Jan. 6 “was a less-than-one-hour departure from a lifetime of otherwise law abiding, respectful, and helpful citizenship.”
Pavlik is scheduled to be sentenced Friday by U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden. McFadden was appointed by Trump.
According to prosecutors, Pavlik was a member of the Guardians of Freedom, an organization founded by his nephew and loosely affiliated with the right-wing militia group Three Percenters.
Pavlik made numerous right-wing statements in the weeks leading up to the Capitol riot claiming that the election had been stolen from then-President Donald Trump and calling for violent action, prosecutors said.
On Jan. 6, Pavlik met up with other members of a Three Percenters-aligned faction called “Group B” to serve as “security” at Trump’s rally to protest the certification of the Electoral College vote by Congress, according to the charges.
He was later seen in surveillance images and police body-worn camera footage wearing a gas mask and vest with patches depicting anti-government phrases, including, “When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty,” prosecutors said.
Once at the Capitol, Pavlik and five other members of his group joined a throng of rioters trying to force their way past a line of officers defending the building’s west terrace tunnel, which provides “immediate and unobstructed access to sensitive areas and offices used by members of Congress.”
Some members of Congress were sheltering in place near that entrance, prosecutors said.
Pavlik was among the first to start skirmishing with the officers, who remained “under siege for almost two and a half hours from Pavlik and others,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joshua Ontell wrote in his 25-page sentencing memo.
Although the attempt by the rioters to gain access through the tunnel eventually failed, Pavlik stayed at the west terrace site until officers cleared it with tear gas hours after the assault began, according to Ontell.
Pavlik’s attorney wrote in his filing that Pavlik has no previous criminal history, did not harm anyone on Jan. 6 and never entered the Capitol building.
In addition to his service as a firefighter, Pavlik volunteered at ground zero after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York, where he spent two weeks “sifting through the disaster site searching for bodies, and body parts,” mostly by hand, Beaumont wrote.
Six months before the events at the Capitol, Pavlik suffered a devastating family tragedy when his only child, Joseph Jr., a Justice police officer and suburban SWAT team member, killed himself, Beaumont wrote.
Pavlik was among 42 Illinoisans to be federally charged as part of the ongoing investigation into the Capitol riot, which prosecutors have described as one of the largest criminal investigations in American history.