$20,000 Fine For Reefer-Smoking Trump Rioter Sought By Prosecutors

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Ronald Sandlin, a Capitol riot participant recently sentenced to over five years in prison after pleading guilty to two felonies including conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding and assaulting officers, should receive a $20,000 fine, federal prosecutors said.

The status of prosecutors’ request isn’t clear, although a filing outlining the government’s arguments notes he raised some $21,000 while seeking support for legal expenses — although he doesn’t have any because his lawyer is funded by taxpayers. Sandlin has already spent thousands of dollars from the money he raised, some of which has gone towards personal expenses like movies. He has also given some of it to other detainees. Alongside two fellow riot participants detained in D.C., Sandlin was accused in September of this year of inciting a riot when the three threateningly held up chairs towards an officer trying to restrain somebody else. He conducted himself in a similarly forward fashion while at the Capitol during the riot, where he helped with both letting in rioters outside the building and accessing the Senate chamber.

An associate of Sandlin’s, Josiah Colt, was infamously photographed during the riot hanging from a ledge overlooking that chamber. Sandlin, Colt, and their co-conspirator (who was also charged) traveled to D.C. in a rental car packed with weapons, including multiple guns, knives, and containers of chemical irritants (bear spray). Sandlin specifically states he only still has $8,000 after raking in $21,000 from his fundraising campaign on a conservative crowdfunding site, where he made allegations of racist and oppressive treatment in custody. Sandlin’s representation by a court-appointed attorney apparently stretches all the way to the beginning of his criminal case, making the deceptive nature of his fundraising effort unmistakable.

Prosecutors already saw some success before federal Judge Dabney Friedrich, who sentenced Sandlin to a stint in jail of 63 months — which is what the government requested. The federal judges imposing these sentences can make their own decisions about the length of defendants’ stints in jail, independent of prosecutors. Sandlin also has a history of seeking financial support for his personal ambitions, having posted a fundraising plea online before the trip he and his co-conspirators took to D.C. Sandlin, who carried a knife while participating in the Capitol attack, also smoked a marijuana joint while inside of the building after exiting the Senate chamber.

In court, he has expressed remorse, although the fundraising plea and comments published in the conservative publication the Gateway Pundit depict a different mindset. Sandlin alleged that his “vindictive and selective prosecution is on purpose to intimidate any perceived political threat to the Biden regime.” He’s definitely not the only participant in the violence who might be essentially remaining radicalized. Hawaii man and founder of the state chapter of the Proud Boys Nicholas Ochs and fellow riot participant Nicholas DeCarlo chanted “four more years!” in a clip that circulated — and was apparently posted — after they received their sentences of four years on Capitol riot charges.