A Kentucky man has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot that resulted in the breach of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. The sentence is the longest imposed on a Jan. 6 rioter so far. File Photo by Ken Cedeno/UPI | License Photo
May 5 (UPI) — A Kentucky man who attacked police during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol on Friday received a 14-year sentence, the longest imposed on any protester to date.
In December, Peter Shwartz was convicted on 13 counts, including three weapons charges and four counts related to attacking police officers.
According to prosecutors, Shwartz was the first person to attack police with chairs during the riot. They described Shwartz as one of the riot’s “most violent and aggressive participants,” and allege that he stole pepper spray from officers and that his actions helped breach the police line protecting the Capitol Building.
Prosecutors said Schwartz “used that pepper spray as a weapon to attack those same officers as they desperately tried to escape the growing and increasingly violent mob.”
Shwartz’s attorneys said their clients’ actions were not done for financial gain but were instead “motivated by a misunderstanding as to the facts surrounding the 2020 election.”
Prosecutors had asked for Schwartz to be sentenced to 24.5 years and to be compelled to pay a $71,541 fine.
In a statement, prosecutors said, “This sentence is at the midpoint of Schwartz’s Sentencing Guidelines range and takes into account his repeated violence against police on January 6th, his substantial violent criminal history, his utter lack of remorse, and his efforts to profit from his crime.”
Shwartz has a criminal history of threatening law enforcement going back to 1991, prosecutors said. In 2019, he was convicted for making terroristic threats, and in 2020 he was convicted of domestic violence after biting and punching his wife.
Judge Amit Mehta, who oversaw Shwartz’s sentencing, will also be charged with sentencing members of the far-right Oath Keepers organization, including founder Stewart Rhodes. He and others were convicted of sedition last year.
Former N.Y. police officer Thomas Webster, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison Tuesday for attacking police during the riot, had the previous longest sentence of any Jan. 6 rioter.
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