Federal prosecutors are seeking over nine years in prison for Robert Morss, a participant in the 2021 Capitol attack who has since been found guilty of several serious criminal charges, including obstruction of an official proceeding and assaulting or impeding police using a dangerous weapon, the latter of which is one of the most serious versions of that charge.
Morss was also found guilty of a robbery offense, evidently for having taken a riot shield from police during the chaos in and around the Capitol building on January 6. Throughout those fateful hours, members of the mob repeatedly used implements stolen from police in their attacks on officers. Peter Schwartz, who the government recommended be sentenced to over two decades in prison, helped distribute chemical irritants originating with police, although he didn’t have a robbery charge in his final list of offenses. (Schwartz also has a long criminal history outside this situation, with dozens of previous convictions.) As for Morss, he’s evidently a former Army Ranger and has worked as a teacher.
At the Capitol, he joined fights with police inside the Lower West Terrace tunnel, as Schwartz did. (So did Patrick McCaughey III, the Capitol rioter recently sentenced to seven and a half years in prison who held the riot shield pinning officer Daniel Hodges in widely circulated footage showing the mob essentially crushing him as he screams in obvious pain.)
As for Morss, he “wrested a riot shield from an MPD detective and passed it back in the tunnel, towards other rioters. He and others then created a wall of shields that they used to continue with the heave-ho efforts,” the Justice Department said late last year. In the tunnel, rioters moved their bodies back and forth in rhythmic unison in attempts to break through police lines and into the building, which are the actions to which the phrase “heave-ho efforts” refers. Morss also eventually went inside the Capitol building itself, and those who either committed violence or entered the building have been among those upon whom prosecutors have focused. Morss also carried a knife.
NEW: DOJ seeks more than nine years in federal prison for Robert Morss, a former Army Ranger who did three tours in Afghanistan and was working as a history teacher on Jan. 6 and "in a position to shape the developing minds of impressionable teenagers." pic.twitter.com/W4dFeGaJ3K
— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) April 20, 2023
