Mark Mazza, an Indiana man who evidently was carrying two guns while participating in the Trump-incited Capitol riot last year, should receive six and a half years in prison, according to prosecutors.
Mazza suggested in previous comments that during his participation in the riot he was interested in violently confronting Nancy Pelosi. He noted in the course of the investigation that he never found the House Speaker. “I was glad I didn’t, because you’d be here for another reason,” he added. Mazza pleaded guilty in June to assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers with a dangerous weapon and carrying a pistol without a license. His case, it’s worth noting, was known since late last year, meaning claims undercutting the idea there were firearms in the crowd on January 6 are simply nonsense and have been for awhile. As for Mazza, his firearm possession was discovered because he lost a Taurus revolver he was carrying, which was loaded with shotgun shells and hollow-point bullets. The weapon was recovered and later traced back to him, after he filed a false claim with police that the gun was stolen.
Mazza said he made the false report because of concerns someone associated with antifa would commit a murder with the gun. Antifa, which is a loosely organized, left-leaning protest movement, is nowhere near the lurking, existential threat claimed by right-wing extremists. Two riot participants from Pennsylvania who were recently sentenced to 41 months in prison apiece talked before the riot about suspicions that some violent, anti-Trump force would descend on D.C., with one of the pair insisting that an opportunity to keep these agitators in check amid supposedly imminent Congressional action keeping Trump in power was why the then-president was pushing his followers to travel to D.C. None of that actually happened, but it depicts some of the brazen delusions fueling the behavior of some of the most dangerous political extremists, some of whom are apparently prepared to themselves perpetrate lethal violence.
At the Capitol, Mazza participated in violence in the Lower West Terrace tunnel area, where he eventually made his way to the front of the crowd, holding open a door and thereby helping allow members of the mob to beat police on the other side with various implements. Mazza also personally hit an officer with a stolen baton. Rioters in the tunnel also at certain points employed so-called heave-ho motions, rocking their bodies back and forth in unison, in an attempt to break through police lines, and Mazza joined those efforts. Rioters used various weapons, like stolen riot shields, a strobe light meant for disorientation, and what was apparently a firecracker, in the tunnel assault.
Recently, a riot participant who assaulted D.C. officer Daniel Hodges in the tunnel area, pinning him inside a doorway with a stolen shield, was found guilty of seven felony offenses. The area is also where Michael Fanone, who was with the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department at the time, was assaulted.
“At some point during the fighting, I was dragged from the line of officers into the crowd,” Fanone explained last year in Congress. “I heard someone scream, “I got one!” as I was swarmed by a violent mob. They ripped off my badge. They grabbed my radio. They seized the ammunition that was secured to my body. They began to beat me, with their fists and with what felt like hard metal objects. At one point I came face to face with an attacker who repeatedly lunged for me and attempted to remove my firearm. I heard chanting from some in the crowd, “get his gun” and “Kill him with his own gun.” I was aware enough to recognize I was at risk of being stripped of, and killed with, my own firearm. I was electrocuted, again and again and again with a Taser. I’m sure I was screaming, but I don’t think I could even hear my own voice.”
