Capitol rioter Patrick McCaughey III has been sentenced to seven and a half years in prison after a guilty verdict on all counts at a bench trial over conduct in D.C. that included an assault on local officer Daniel Hodges infamously captured on video. Hodges, participating in the defense of the Capitol, can be heard screaming in pain as he’s crushed with a stolen riot shield that McCaughey was holding.
Others from the rioting mob were also gathered in the same Capitol tunnel where the assault took place, adding to the force McCaughey was able to wield. It’s in that tunnel where rioting Trump supporters repeatedly tried to use the brute force of their bodies to break through police lines, rocking back and forth in rhythmic unison. Serious, physical violence unfolded in that area throughout the hours of the assault, and it’s just outside the tunnel where then-officer Michael Fanone was beaten nearly to death. As for McCaughey, the bench trial — which is a trial in which a judge rather than a jury decides defendants’ fate — was handled by Trevor McFadden, who was originally nominated to the federal judiciary by Donald Trump. Federal prosecutors had sought a sentence for McCaughey much longer than seven and a half years, instead requesting a decade and a half (or 188 months, to be precise).
Mirroring others who served that day and have participated in court proceedings against various individual rioters, Hodges shared a statement on Twitter that he said he read before the sentencing. He noted the dozens of officers from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department who have left the force after the chaos of January 6, after which some also committed suicide. “I have sat by and watched in the intervening years as so many criminals from that day come through court and plead that they were “caught up in the moment,” that they would never take the actions they did if not for those around them, implying some sort of violent hypnosis renders them not culpable for their own crimes,” Hodges said. “Of all weapons utilized that day, the most effective one was the mob: every single person present made it incalculably more difficult to repel the violent, tend to the wounded, and protect Democracy.”
Multiple members of McCaughey’s family cited the influence of the man’s father, NBC noted. That includes a sister of the defendant and his mother. Elsewhere, new arrests of participants in the mob’s assault on the Capitol grounds have continued as recently as this very week, per federal revelations.
Patrick McCaughey III has been sentenced to 90 months in prison for crimes committed at the Capitol on Jan 6, including his assault on myself with a riot shield.
I gave the following statement in person at sentencing. pic.twitter.com/uXn0cgsxyc
— Definitely Danny (@SemperWry) April 14, 2023