Thomas Webster, 56, a Marine Corps veteran and former New York City Police Department officer who was convicted on all charges he faced for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison on Thursday.
Videos played during the trial shows Webster wielding a large metal flagpole, and elbowing his way to the front of the crowd of Trump supporters attacking the police barricade during the riot. He yelled at one of the officers, “You fucking piece of shit. You fucking commie motherfuckers, man.”
The officer’s bodycam video shows Webster using the flagpole to hit the metal barricade before tackling the officer to the ground and attempting to gouge out the officer’s eyes.
He argued at trial that he was merely acting in self defence but the jury wasn’t buying it. He was convicted on all six charges including assaulting law enforcement.
“What you did that day, it is hard to really put into words,” Judge Amit Mehta told Webster on Thursday, according to NBC. “I still remain shocked every single time I see the video of the attack.”
“It is not until you arrived, Mr. Webster, that all hell broke loose,” Judge Mehta added.
Prosecutors argued that Webster, a former cop, should have known better.
“No one knows better than a former cop how dangerous it was on Jan. 6,” the federal prosecutor said, saying that Webster’s service made his behavior “particularly heinous.”
Prosecutors had recommended a sentence of 17 years in prison. Judge Mehta sentenced Webster to 10 years in prison and three years of supervised release. It is the longest prison sentence ever handed down to a member of the Jan. 6 mob that stormed the Capitol. Another ex-cop Thomas Robertson and Guy Reffitt, a recruiter for the right wing extremist group The Three Percenters, were both sentenced to over seven years in federal prison.
