A far-right extremist group leader was sentenced on Friday to greater than 5 years in prison for assaulting officers during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A far-right extremist group leader was sentenced on Friday to greater than 5 years in prison for repeatedly assaulting police officers with makeshift weapons during a mob’s assault on the U.S. Capitol over three years in the past.
Scott Miller, who helped lead a Proud Boys chapter for Maryland and Washington, D.C., coordinated with different group members earlier than they invaded the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in accordance to federal prosecutors. Miller, 33, attacked police seven completely different occasions with weapons, together with a bottle, a stick and poles.
Notes discovered on Miller’s cellphone point out that his white supremacist ideology and antisemitic views influenced his choice to storm the Capitol, a prosecutor wrote in a courtroom submitting. He expressed his intent to “battle” in order to defend “White America,” the submitting says.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who’s overseeing former President Donald Trump’s election interference case in Washington, stated an assault just like the Jan. 6 rebel “can occur once more” in the U.S.
“Extremism is alive and properly in this nation,” she stated earlier than sentencing Miller to 5 years and 6 months behind bars.
Miller apologized for assaulting police on the Capitol. He acknowledged that he embraced extremist ideologies earlier than the Capitol riot, however instructed the decide that he’s “reforming” himself.
“I’m not a violent or hateful individual regardless of a number of the stuff you’ve seen,” he instructed Chutkan.
Investigators discovered Nazi paraphernalia and memes selling racially motivated violence after they searched Miller’s Millersville, Maryland, residence and his telephone. A photograph discovered on Miller’s telephone exhibits him posing and smiling subsequent to a information story describing the drowning of migrants, prosecutors stated.
Authorities additionally discovered a shirt that Miller wore for Halloween to gown up as Derek Chauvin, the white Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd, a Black man, in the summer time of 2020. Miller posed for a photograph carrying the costume whereas kneeling on the ground. Chauvin pressed a knee on Floyd’s neck for over 9 minutes.
Chutkan stated the extent of Miller’s violent ideology and the racist, antisemitic materials saved on his telephone left her questioning whether or not Miller is genuinely remorseful or able to such a speedy transformation.
“They don’t simply arrive there by some random algorithm,” stated the decide, who learn aloud a number of the most hateful messages.
Chutkan has been one of many hardest punishers of Jan. 6 defendants. Miller’s prison sentence is the longest that she has handed down thus far in 45 circumstances, in accordance to an Associated Press evaluation of courtroom information.
Prosecutors advisable a prison sentence of 5 years and 11 months for Miller, who was arrested in December 2022. He pleaded responsible in January to assaulting a police officer with a harmful weapon.
“Miller’s participation in the riot – a riot that disrupted the peaceable switch of energy – was significantly egregious, given his a number of and repeated violent assaults on police officers and his coordination and planning with different members of the Proud Boys,” Justice Department prosecutor Kaitlin Klamann wrote.
In 2019, Miller was arrested on expenses of disrupting a “Drag Queen Story Time” for kids at a library in his Maryland hometown, The Baltimore Sun reported. Miller was accused of shouting at a performer and shoving a library board member who tried to intervene.
“While these expenses have been finally dropped, Miller’s actions on this event function additional proof that Miller is keen to use violence to implement his private beliefs,” Klamann wrote.
In the times main up to the Jan. 6 riot, Miller and different Proud Boys members mentioned their plans for that day and the opportunity of violence, prosecutors stated. Miller arrived on the Capitol after the riot erupted, carrying gloves with plastic knuckles, ski goggles and a military-style backpack.
He joined the mob attacking police officers guarding a tunnel main to an entrance on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace, the place a number of the most brutal violence occurred. Picking up a pole, he charged at police and repeatedly struck an officer with it.
After throwing a number of objects at police, Miller picked up one other pole and struck at the very least two officers a number of occasions. He additionally grabbed a protect from police officers and handed it to different rioters in the group outdoors the Capitol.
Miller is ashamed of his conduct on Jan. 6 and minimize ties with the Proud Boys a couple of month after the riot, protection legal professional Elizabeth Mullin stated in a courtroom submitting.
“He disavows the group and the rules it stands for,” she wrote.
Mullin stated there isn’t any proof that Miller deliberate to assault police.
“Regrettably, like so many others there that day, he turned carried away by the frenzy of the group, which had been whipped right into a fervor by Mr. Trump and the opposite rally audio system,” she wrote.
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