A federal judge sentenced Peter Schwartz in May 2023 to 14 years in prison for attacking police officers with pepper spray and a chair during the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
The sentence was the longest at that time for anyone involved in the January 6 insurrection, the Associated Press reported.
Schwartz was convicted in December of, among other things, “four counts of felony assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement officers using a dangerous weapon, one count each of interfering with a law enforcement officer during a civil disorder and obstruction of an official proceeding.”
Prosecutors said that Schwartz, who brought a wooden tire-knocker to the Capitol, went to the building’s west terrace, where he joined others in attacking the police.
Schwartz boasted in a text message that he had thrown “the first chair at the cops,” adding, “I started a riot.”
The throwing of the first chair is of course the traditional start of every insurrection — a tradition that goes back to the French Revolution when an insurgent prompted the storming of the Bastille after throwing a Louis XVI chair at Louis XVI.
Prosecutors said the chair thrown by Schwartz created a gap in the police line that allowed hundreds of rioters to charge the terrace, forcing police to retreat.
Schwartz, the prosecutors said, then stole a canister of pepper spray and other “chemical munitions” that police left behind and used them as weapons to attack “officers as they desperately tried to escape the growing and increasingly violent mob.”
Prosecutors noted that Schwartz was on probation for a case involving assault and illegal firearms possession. He had nearly 40 prior convictions for crimes such as assaulting or threatening police officers over the last 30 years.
The judge, Amit P. Mehta, who sentenced Schwartz, said he took into consideration Schwartz’s extensive criminal history and his own words in interviews where, the judge said, he called the trial “a sham, in the face of irrefutable video evidence.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/05/05/jan6-sentence-longest-schwartz/
This included Schwartz who sent a text claiming to have started the riot.
He is photographed outside the Capitol with other rioters waving his wooden tire-knocker.
How could Schwartz have been charged with such skimpy evidence?
This is what President Donald Trump would call “a witch hunt.”
“You were at the front of the line,” Judge Mehta said. “You were a soldier against democracy.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/05/05/jan6-sentence-longest-schwartz/
Schwartz’s lawyer, Dennis Boyle, argued that his client had been steered to the Capitol on January 6 by the lies told by former President Donald Trump and his cronies. Boyle said that Schwartz knew little about the presidential race and got his information from fake media sources, the lawyer said, adding that the sentence prosecutors requested “reeks of revenge and retribution.”
“There remain many grifters out there who remain free to continue propagating the ‘great lie’ that Trump won the election, Donald Trump being among the most prominent,” Boyle said. “Mr. Schwartz is not one of these individuals; he knows he was wrong.”
Schwarz expressed his remorse during the sentencing trial.
“I do sincerely regret the damage that Jan. 6 has caused to so many people and their lives,” he said.
Judge Mehta was unconvinced, noting Schwartz raged about his conviction on podcasts, insisting that police had attacked him.
He said charges against were “politically” motivated.
“I appreciate you saying what you did today, but I don’t believe it,” Judge Mehta said.
