A participant in the mob attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, has received a sentence several times more than what prosecutors originally sought after defiance of the judicial process that included skipping hearings and berating a prosecutor via email. The defendant, Frank Rocco Giustino, was taken into custody last month after skipping a sentencing hearing.
Giustino previously pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor criminal offense in relation to his January 6 conduct that came with up to six months detention, though prosecutors originally sought just 21 days. But the time in jail he’s now facing is three months, or 90 days. His original conduct at the Capitol included actually entering the building shortly after other members of the pro-Trump crowd began forcing their way through the particular entrance point he utilized.
Perhaps explaining the reasoning behind some of his earlier defiance of the process, Giustino during a June hearing questioned the very legitimacy of the judicial system in which he was compelled to engage, echoing the “sovereign citizen” movement. “Have you guys heard anything that I have said? Have you seen anything that I have filed? This is not a real court. There is not a single judicial officer here presiding on my case,” he memorably claimed in June.
He singled out the judge, replying to a threat of a warrant for his arrest in the event of him skipping town with a remark about potentially directing the judge’s arrest — something Giustino couldn’t do. Prosecutors upped their sentencing ask following that earlier courtroom debacle. In a later email to an Assistant U.S. Attorney, Giustino referred to the criminal case he was facing as “terrorism.” Some on the Right have used the recent mass release of footage from the Capitol on January 6 to bolster claims that defendants from the riot have been somehow mistreated or even swept up in a government entrapment operation. Right-wing social media figures were circulating an image of a man actually holding a vape and suggesting it was a badge, showing a secret law enforcement figure.
