Thomas Webster, a retired New York Police Department officer, was sentenced in September 2022 to 10 years in prison for using a metal flagpole to attack one of the police officers trying to restrain a mob of President Donald Trump supporters during an attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
A jury rejected Webster’s claim that he acted in self-defense when he tackled Noah Rathbun, a Metropolitan Police Department officer, and grabbed the officer’s gas mask outside the Capitol, The Associated Press reported.
After federal Judge Amit Mehta announced the sentence, Webster apologized to Rathbun, who was in the courtroom. Webster regretted that he participated in the riot.
“I wish the horrible events of that day had never happened,” he told the judge.
Judge Mehta said Rathbun wasn’t Webster’s only victim on January 6.
“The other victim was democracy,” Mehta said, “and that is not something that can be taken lightly.”
In a court filing, prosecutors accused Webster of “disgracing a democracy that he once fought honorably to protect and serve.”
Webster’s attorney James Monroe said that the mob was “guided by unscrupulous politicians” and others who perpetuated the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from President Trump.
The Associated Press reported that Webster deserved leniency because of his decades of service to New York City.
It’s probably worth repeating that Webster, a retired NYPD police officer and former U.S. Marine, participated in mob violence against Washington D.C. police officers, injuring more than a hundred officer.
Five officers, who were at the Capitol on January 6, died in the days and weeks of injuries or trauma associated with the insurrection.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/07/politics/capitol-police-injuries/index.html
“As a former Marine and retired police officer, Thomas Webster could readily see the growing dangers to law enforcement when he and other members of the mob targeted the Capitol on January 6th,” U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves said. “He chose to escalate the situation, brutally going on the attack. Today’s sentence holds him accountable for his repeated attacks of an officer that day.”
Steven M. D’Antuono, assistant director in charge of the FBI Washington D.C. field office, said that Webster had taken an oath to defend the Constitution.
“When he assaulted an officer at the U.S. Capitol that day, Mr. Webster betrayed not only his oath but also his fellow law enforcement officers, who risk their lives every day to protect the American people,” D’Antuono said.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington D.C. said that Webster wore a bullet-proof vest and carried a large metal flagpole when he illegally entered the Capitol grounds on January 6.
“Webster approached an officer from the Metropolitan Police Department who was behind the metal gates. Webster pointed his finger at the officer and began swearing at him, telling him, among other things to ‘take your sh— off,’ an apparent invitation to the officer to take off his badge and fight,” the U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement.
“Webster then aggressively shoved the metal gate into the officer’s body. He raised the flagpole and forcefully swung it toward the officer. The officer managed to wrest the flagpole away.
Webster, however, then broke through the metal barricade, tackled the officer to the ground, and tried to remove his helmet and gas mask, choking him. During this attack, the officer struggled to breathe. While Webster had the officer restrained on the ground and unable to breathe, others in the mob began kicking the officer. The officer sustained several injuries as a result of Webster’s attack.
