Trump Crazed Rioter Given 3.5+ Years In Prison For Assaulting Police

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Over 220 people have been hit with federal criminal charges for assaulting police during the violence at the Capitol earlier this year, and now, another one of those individuals will be facing a lengthy consequence for their actions. Washington resident Devlyn Thompson has been sentenced to 46 months in prison after previously pleading guilty to assaulting police at the Capitol; his sentence works out to nearly four years.

A press release from the Justice Department lays out some of what Thompson did, including that he “was among individuals in a crowd on the Lower West Terrace of the Capitol who were pushing against and assaulting Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) officers in the tunnel leading into the U.S. Capitol.” That’s where D.C. officer Daniel Hodges was infamously crushed by the crowd at one point. Alongside fellow officers who faced the brunt of the Trump supporters’ savage violence, he eventually testified to Congress about his experiences.

As the Justice Department explains things, Thompson participated in hurling various objects at officers, and he also participated in the stealing of officers’ riot shields, impeding the ability of law enforcement personnel who were there that day to defend themselves against the onslaught. Among other actions, Thompson “also helped throw a large speaker at the front line of officers,” the Justice Department says. Thompson’s sentence is slightly lower than the sentence recently doled out to Capitol rioter and Florida resident Robert Palmer, who was sentenced to over five years in prison for assaulting police during the Capitol violence — the longest sentence to be handed down in any riot case up to that point.

The extents to which these people were willing to go in service of their cause — and in service of Donald Trump — are disturbing. The at times methodical nature of the assaults on these officers who were simply doing their jobs and attempting to defend the lives of members of Congress and many others are cause for ongoing concern, since there’s been no systematic distancing from the events of that day on the part of Trump himself. Instead, he has repeatedly sought to explain away what happened — and he could easily be considered the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, if he formally begins campaigning. That’s not promising.