WASHINGTON — A retired New York Metropolis Police Division officer who was convicted of a number of felonies for attacking a D.C. cop with a flag pole on Jan. 6 after which tackling the officer to the bottom and making an attempt to tear off his gasoline masks was sentenced to 10 years in federal jail on Thursday.
Thomas Webster was sentenced by Decide Amit P. Mehta to the longest sentence but in a Jan. 6 case.
Webster, 56, was convicted by a jury in May after they decided he was mendacity on the stand when he tried to persuade them he was making an attempt to assist the officer he assaulted to “see my hands” when he grabbed the officer’s gasoline masks after he tackled him to the bottom.
Nobody needs to be “gleeful” that Webster was dealing with 17.5 years in federal jail, Mehta stated Thursday.
“What you probably did that day, it’s onerous to actually put into phrases,” Mehta instructed Webster. “I nonetheless stay shocked each single time I see .”
Mehta stated Webster was “the primary aggressor” in his confrontation with the D.C. police officer, and “all hell broke free” on the police line when Webster confirmed up at that a part of the police line.
“Nothing can clarify or justify Mr. Webster’s rage,” Assistant U.S. Lawyer Hava Arin Levenson Mirell instructed the decide. “Webster is among the rioters who ought to have identified higher.”
“Nobody is aware of higher than a former cop how harmful it was on Jan. 6,” the federal prosecutor stated, saying that Webster’s service made his conduct “significantly heinous.”
Even when he didn’t know higher than “to imagine Trump’s lie,” he knew higher than to assault officers, Mirell stated.
“He feels entitled to do what he desires as a former police officer,” Mirell stated. Webster went “old-school” and “rogue” on Jan. 6, she stated, including that “instigated violence” and was clearly anticipating a violent conflict.
The Justice Division argued, because the jury concluded, that Webster was very clearly mendacity on the stand, calling his claims that the officer he attacked instigated the struggle, “preposterous.” It will have been “completely insane” for the officer who Webster assaulted to have invited Webster to struggle him, the prosecutor stated.
The arguments that Webster and his workforce made “couldn’t be extra at odds together with his testimony,” Mehta stated.
“I take no pleasure in doing this,” Mehta stated when imposing the sentence, saying that Webster “constructed another reality” on the stand.
“The video would not lie,” Mehta stated. “The jury noticed by means of it, I noticed by means of it, it wasn’t that onerous. And I am sorry you thought you can rise up there and recommend in any other case.”
Webster’s legal professionals had sought a decrease sentence, arguing in a filing earlier this week that he suffered from PTSD from his profession as a police officer and blamed his actions on Jan. 6, partly, on “flashbacks.”
Thomas Robertson, one other former officer, was sentenced to over seven years in federal jail final month, as was Texas extremist Man Reffitt.
