A man with a lengthy criminal record, he was sentenced to 14 years for attacking police officers with pepper spray and a chair during the storming of the Capitol in Washington DC on January 6, 2021.
The agency Associated Press indicated that it is the longest prison sentence so far among the hundreds of cases for these acts of violence in the Capitol.
Judge Amit Mehta, who sentenced 48-year-old Peter Schwartz, also handed down the previous longer sentence of 10 years, to a retired New York Police Department officer who assaulted a police officer outside the Capitol on September 6. January 2021.
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Judge Mehta said that Schwartz was a “soldier against democracy” who engaged in “the kind of chaos, chaos that has never been seen in the history of the country.”
“You are not a political prisoner,” the judge told him. “He is not someone who opposes injustice or fights against an autocratic regime.”
Schwartz briefly addressed the judge before he was handed down his sentence, saying: “I am sincerely sorry for the damage that January 6 has caused to so many people and their lives.”
The events in the Capitol left a balance of five dead and several injured: a crowd of supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed in an attempt to prevent the certification of the results of the 2020 presidential elections.
Nearly half of Americans believe Trump should be impeached for his role in the Capitol attack
The protesters were called by former President Trump to protest against the results of the elections in which Biden was elected. But the participants turned violent and managed to enter the building by breaking doors and windows. Legislators and staff had to be evacuated to safe places.
