A New Jersey man on Friday became the first person to plead guilty to assaulting a police officer during the January 6 Capitol riot, the Associated Press reported.
The attorney for gym owner Scott Kevin Fairlamb said that prosecutors will push for a 3½- to 4¼-year prison sentence, but the judge isn’t confined by the plea agreement’s terms.
Fairlamb’s affirmation of guilt occurred two weeks after four police officers testified before a House of Representatives commission about their experiences battling the Capitol rioters on January 6. The insurrectionists assaulted approximately 140 officers that day—about 80 from the U.S. Capitol Police and about 60 from the District of Columbia’s Metropolitan Police Department—according to the U.S. Justice Department. Five of those officers later died, with four taking their lives.
Aquilino Gonell, a U.S. Capitol Police officer who testified at the congressional hearing, recalled thinking, “This is how I am going to die.” Harry Dunn, another officer with the Capitol Police, spoke about hearing rioters use racial slurs against him. “Those words are weapons,” he said. “It just hurts that we have people in this country that result to that.”
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below:
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Fairlamb’s deal with federal prosecutors could be a benchmark for dozens of other cases in which Capitol rioters clashed with police.
Fairlamb, a former mixed martial arts fighter whose brother is a U.S. Secret Service agent, was one of the very first rioters to breach the Capitol after other rioters smashed windows using riot shields and kicked out a locked door, according to federal prosecutors. After leaving the building, Fairlamb harassed a line of police officers, shouting in their faces and blocking their progress through the mob, prosecutors wrote in a court filing.
A video showed him holding a collapsible baton and shouting, and shouting, “What [do] patriots do? We f****** disarm them and then we storm the f****** Capitol!”
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth accepted the plea for Fairlamb, who has been jailed since his January 22 arrest at his home in Stockholm, New Jersey.
Fairlamb, 44, pleaded guilty to two counts, obstruction of an official proceeding and assaulting a Metropolitan Police Department officer. The counts carry a maximum of more than 20 years in prison.
He had been indicted on 12 counts, including civil disorder, assaulting a police officer and engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds.
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