A 55-year-old man from New Jersey named Peter Michael Krill, Jr., was sentenced this week to time in prison after pleading guilty to a felony criminal offense of civil disorder for participating in the Capitol violence of early 2021.
Krill got nine months with a year of supervised release that will come after that stint in prison. While he was found to have actually entered the Capitol building that day — and the accompanying felony charge was steep, it notably wasn’t a charge of assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers, which could have produced a significantly longer sentence.
Krill was among the January 6 participants who reportedly attended the large, outdoor rally in Washington, D.C., that day where then-President Donald Trump furthered his lies of a stolen election. Per details released by federal authorities, Krill later broadcasted multiple times to the social media platform TikTok after arriving at the Capitol complex. “Krill took a video from the scaffolding depicting fellow rioters on the Inauguration scaffolding and the growing crowd below,” a press release said. He then entered the building.
Inside the Capitol, Krill made his way to the Rotunda, where he was eventually among the last riot participants to comply with police demands for exiting the area. He was ultimately inside the Capitol building for nearly an hour, according to the federal timeline, and Krill was later arrested in his home state. The federal press release identified Krill as hailing from a small community in New Jersey’s southern regions.
Trump continues facing his own criminal proceedings related to his ploys to retain power that effectively led up to the Capitol attack, to which prosecutors have already connected the ex-president. Trump has also effectively aligned himself with their cause, repeatedly suggesting pardons for rioters, a group including many who brutally beat police and threatened the lives of others, from figures in government to staff members.
