WASHINGTON — A federal judge Friday sentenced a man who was armed with a wooden tire beater and participated in a series of assaults on officers during the Jan. 6 attack to 14 years and two months, the longest sentence ever for a troublemaker on Capitol Hill thus far.
Peter Schwartz, who has 38 prior convictions, said he was sorry for the damage caused by the riots.
“I am sincerely sorry for the damage that January 6 has caused to so many people and their lives,” said Schwartz, a 49-year-old welder from Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
US District Judge Amit Mehta said it was not Schwartz’s remorse that did it. «You are not a political prisoner, Mr. Schwartz,» the judge said when imposing the sentence. “You are not Alexei Navalny”, Russia’s most prominent opposition politician.
Sentencing guidelines indicated a sentence of 262 months. The Justice Department requested 294 months, or 24.5 years, in federal prison. During sentencing, Judge Mehta called that request «quite dramatic,» noting that it was 2.5 times longer than the longest sentence on January 6, one he handed down.
Schwartz, who was convicted in December, he will also be under 36 months of supervised release and must pay $2,000 to the Architect of the Capitol in restitution.
Prosecutors said Schwartz was the first to throw a folding chair into the line of officers guarding the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace.
«By knocking over that chair, Schwartz directly contributed to the collapse of the police line which allowed the rioters to move forward and take over the entire terrace,» they wrote in a statement. judgment note.
Schwartz then used chemical munitions, including pepper spray, left behind by fleeing officers to attack the officers as they «desperately tried to escape the growing and increasingly violent mob,» prosecutors wrote.
Schwartz later made his way to a tunnel entrance, which officers had spent hours defending against rioters who tried to force their way into the Capitol building.
Working with two other co-defendants, Markus Maly and Jeffrey Brown, Schwartz again used pepper spray on the officers, authorities said. Brown was sentenced to 4.5 years in prison last week and Maly has yet to be sentenced.
The Justice Department said Schwartz «has shown no remorse for his conduct, giving repeated interviews from the DC Jail stating that he is a completely innocent victim of biased prosecution and has done nothing wrong.»
Federal prosecutors also requested a fine of $71,541, which is what they say Schwartz has raised on a crowdfunding platform in which he branded himself «Patriot Pete Political Prisoner in DC.»
The judge rejected the fine.
On his own memorandumSchwartz’s lawyers wrote that his actions «were not motivated by any desire for personal financial gain or any other type of benefit,» but rather «by a misunderstanding as to the facts surrounding the 2020 election,» and that Schwartz “I knew next to nothing about the 2020 election and heard sources of information that were clearly false.”
zoe richards contributed.