Federal prosecutors have recommended that a Locust Grove man charged with some of the most violent behavior during the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot be sentenced to more than eight years in prison.
During the sometimes-brutal conflict between rioters and police on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace, Jack Wade Whitton Jr., 33, was photographed and caught on video attacking Capitol Police officers defending a tunnel leading to the building’s basement, where members of Congress were being evacuated.
Photos show Whitton striking police with a metal crutch and dragging a fallen officer into the crowd.
“You’re gonna die tonight!” Whitton, a former personal trainer and fencing contractor, yelled while fighting with police, according to court documents quoting police body camera footage.
Later, in an Instagram message to an acquaintance, Whitton bragged about the officer he pulled into the thick of the mob.
“This is from a bad cop,” Whitton wrote alongside pictures of his bloody hands. “Yea I fed him to the people. Idk his status. And don’t care tbh.”
Credit: U.S. Department of Justice
Credit: U.S. Department of Justice
The officer was badly bruised but survived. He was led out of the crowd by some rioters while others continued to beat him as he retreated, prosecutors wrote in a 41-page sentencing memo filed earlier this week.
The memo recommended Whitton be sentenced to 97 months in prison and fined nearly $61,685, the exact amount Whitton raised on the Christian-oriented fundraising site GiveSendGo, which has hosted fundraising pages for dozens of people from the mob of Donald Trump supporters who were charged in the Capitol violence.
“Whitton should not be able to ‘capitalize’ on his participation in the January 6 riot in this way,” prosecutors wrote.
Prosecutors said police fought for two hours to control the tunnel entrance and had managed to push rioters out when Whitton and co-defendant Justin Jersey forced their way to the front of the crowd and renewed the attack.
“It is clear from video footage of the LWT (Lower West Terrace) during these assaults that it was Whitton’s attack on the police line from the south, along with Jersey’s contemporaneous attack on Officer A.W. from the north, that ignited the rageful onslaught of violence that followed,” the prosecution wrote.
Whitton, who has been in custody since his April 2021 arrest, pleaded guilty to assaulting a police officer more than a year ago in a deal worked out with prosecutors. His sentencing has been delayed as his eight co-defendants either worked out their own deals or took their charges to trial.
Whitton is finally scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 4 in Washington before U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras. If the judge agrees with prosecutors, it would be the longest prison stint, by far, of any Georgian so far charged in the riot.
The maximum sentence for assaulting a Capitol Police officer is 20 years.
Credit: U.S. Department of Justice
Credit: U.S. Department of Justice
In a separate court filing, Whitton’s attorney, Pittsburgh-based Komron Jon Maknoon, described him as the product of multiple dysfunctional and abusive households, bouncing between the homes of divorced parents and stepparents in an atmosphere of poverty and drug addiction.
Maknoon said Whitton has a “severe history of substance abuse” dating to his teenage years and continuing through adulthood. On Jan. 6, Whitton had mixed alcohol with amphetamines prescribed to treat an undisclosed medical condition and was “highly intoxicated” by the time he reached Capitol grounds, according to the court filing.
Whitton was “not interested in former President Trump or politics” and had only come to Washington at the request of his longtime girlfriend, his attorney wrote.
Maknoon asked Contreras for a sentence below the federal guidelines. Whitton has already been incarcerated for more than 31 months in a federal pretrial detention center in Clayton County, time that will be credited toward his eventual sentence.
So far, 29 people with Georgia ties have been charged with crimes relating to the Jan. 6 riot. Of those, 22 have either pleaded guilty or been judged guilty at trial. Charges are outstanding for the remaining seven defendants.
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