They rule against Trump's lawyers and 7 policemen sue him 2:23
(CNN) -
A Florida man who attacked police in the United States Capitol on January 6 with a fire extinguisher, a wooden board and a pole was sentenced to more than five years in prison on Friday, the longest sentence. Long for a Capitol shaker thus far.
Robert Scott Palmer is the first person to be sentenced for the felony of assaulting an officer with a dangerous weapon.
His 63-month sentence could set a benchmark for the more than 140 facing the same charge.
"Every day we hear about reports from undemocratic factions, people planning acts of violence in 2024," said District Judge Tanya Chutkan as she handed down the sentence. "It must be made clear that trying to stop the peaceful transition of power, assaulting law enforcement, will be punished with some punishment. Not staying home, not watching Netflix, not doing what you were doing before you were arrested."
Palmer was first publicly identified by detectives online, who tracked him down through images and video of Palmer in an American flag jacket fighting outside the Capitol.
According to his plea agreement, Palmer sprayed a fire extinguisher on a police line and threw the empty container twice.
When he refused to back down, Palmer was shot in the stomach with a rubber bullet.
Unreleased videos of Capitol agitators present 5:36
"I wonder if the people who usually come before me," Chutkan said of the black and minority defendants he presides over, "if they had tried to storm the Capitol that day, they would have encountered rubber bullets. I suspect not." .
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Chutkan, appointed by former President Barack Obama and a former public defender, became perhaps the toughest judge for the January 6 defendants.
Seven cases in front of her have reached sentence, and the seven have received jail terms ranging from 14 days to more than five years behind bars.
During the hearing, Palmer said he saw TV host Rachel Maddow do a segment about her case on MSNBC and was "horrified, absolutely devastated to see me there. Just to see the coldness and the calculation going up those steps with the fire extinguisher. to spray those cops. "
Palmer also said in a letter to the judge that he now realizes that former President Donald Trump "lied" to his supporters about the election.
"They kept spitting out the false narrative about a stolen election and how it was 'our duty' to stand up to tyranny," Palmer wrote.
"Little did I realize that they were the tyrannical ones desperate to cling to power at any cost, even creating the chaos they knew would happen with such rhetoric."
Assault on the Capitol
