A Florida man who was photographed carrying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s podium during the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol was sentenced to prison on Friday.
Adam Johnson, a stay-at-home father of five was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton to 75 days in prison and one year supervised release. He was also ordered to pay a $5,000 fine and perform 200 hours of community service.
Prosecutors had requested a sentence of 90 days.
“We’re on a dangerous slide in America,” Walton said Friday, according to NBC News. The judge compared what happened on Jan. 6 to something you’d expect to “see in banana republics.”
Walton asked Johnson how he could hold himself out as a good role model for his five children when he came to D.C. and did what he did on Jan. 6, NBC reported.
Johnson pleaded guilty to entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds last year. Prosecutors say when he breached the Capitol building with other rioters, he allegedly stole and carried the House speaker’s lectern to the Rotunda for a “photo op.”
After the riot he texted friends and family about photo and bragged that he “broke the internet.”
In court, Johnson admitted that posing with Pelosi’s lectern was a “very stupid idea” and said he bears “no ill will toward her or her office at all,” according to The Associated Press.
More than 740 individuals have been arrested in the Capitol riot case. More than 40 Capitol rioters have received sentences of incarceration so far, and more than 200 defendants have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanor offense, NBC reported.
