Mark Finkenstaedt/ZUMA
The first of more than 100 people charged with assaulting a police officer during the January 6 insurrection have plead guilty. Scott Fairlamb and Devlyn Thompson are now facing three to five years in prison for their participation in the insurrection at the US Capitol.
On January 6, hundreds of supporters of then-president Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to stop the counting of the electoral votes that would formally declare Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 election. In the weeks leading up to the attack, Trump had been trying to overturn his loss by spreading lies about wide scale fraud. During the attack, Trump failed to tell his supporters to go home, instead choosing to further inflame violence by tweeting. When the rioters were finally cleared, five people were dead including one police officer. Trump was banned from Twitter and impeached for the second time.
Now, hundreds of people have been charged with crimes ranging from assault to trespassing. Fairlamb, who is from New Jersey, admitted to shoving and punching a Washington, DC police officer. “Are you an American? Act like it!” he can be heard shouting in video footage. According to court documents, Fairlamb also kicked down a door leading to the Senate side of the Capitol complex and posted videos of himself screaming about storming the Capitol on social media. “Even among other rioters, the defendant’s aggression stood out,” US District Judge Royce Lamberth said about Fairlamb.
Thompson, from Washington, admitted to striking a police officer with a baton as the cop pepper sprayed the insurrectionists. Assistant US Attorney Tejpal Chawla said Thompson was “at the front lines of the most dangerous violence at the Capitol.” Both men will be formally sentenced on September 27. These guilty pleas are just the beginning. There are 165 people total charged with assaulting a police officer, 50 of them with a weapon.
