Man gets 14 years for pepper-spraying police in US Capitol riot

Peter J. Schwartz, a Pennsylvania man convicted of felony assault and other charges for pepper-spraying police officers during the US Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, has been sentenced to 14 years in prison, making it the longest prison term to date for anyone convicted in the riot.

Schwartz, who is 49 years old and a welder by trade, was convicted last December in a federal court trial where evidence showed that he was in the vanguard of a mob attacking police at the lower west terrace of the Capitol. According to the government’s case, Schwartz boasted later that he had “started a riot” by “throwing the first chair.” Prosecutors said that Schwartz then seized a police duffle bag full of pepper-spray canisters and handed them out to others in the mob, including his wife, so they could turn them against police officers.

Schwartz began chasing down any retreating officers he could find and dousing them with pepper spray as he surged through the crowd into the lower west terrace tunnel wielding a wooden club. Schwartz was arrested in early February in his hometown of Uniontown, Pennsylvania.

Schwartz was found guilty on four counts of assault with a dangerous weapon and six other charges, including obstructing an official proceeding, entering a restricted building with a dangerous weapon, and engaging in physical violence in a restricted building. His 170-month prison term surpasses the previous longest sentence yet handed down in a case related to the Jan. 6 attack, which was 10 years received by former New York City cop Thomas Webster for assaulting a Washington police officer that day.

Schwartz’s lawyers appealed for leniency, saying that their client and his wife had traveled to Washington to hear then-President Donald Trump’s speech and walked to the Capitol with other protesters without intending in advance to incite violence. Defense attorneys said in court documents that Schwartz’s actions that day “were motivated by a misunderstanding as to the facts surrounding the 2020 election.”

Schwartz’s punishment may soon be eclipsed, as the US Justice Department on Friday asked a federal judge to sentence Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes to 25 years in prison for his conviction on seditious conspiracy and other charges stemming from the Jan. 6 riot.

At least 950 people have been charged and more than 600 convicted for their roles in the Capitol rampage by supporters of then-President Donald Trump. The Jan. 6 attack marked the most violent assault on the halls of Congress since the British invasion of Washington during the War of 1812. Trump had urged his followers in a speech that day to “fight like hell” to disrupt congressional certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory, a race the Republican incumbent has continued to falsely claim was stolen by massive fraud.

Schwartz’s sentencing follows the recent conviction of four members of another far-right extremist group, the Proud Boys, for seditious conspiracy, defined under a Civil War-era law as a plot to oppose the government with force. Markus Maly, one of Schwartz’s co-defendants, is still awaiting sentencing.