A U.S. district court judge reduced the sentence Wednesday for an Army veteran and former cop who was convicted on six charges for his participation in the mob that breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Virginia resident Thomas Robertson was sentenced in 2022 to serve seven years in prison on charges of interfering with police officers during a civil disorder and entering a restricted area with a dangerous weapon. Robertson carried a large wooden stick during the riot and was photographed in the Capitol’s crypt making an obscene gesture in front of a statute of John Stark, an American general during the Revolutionary War, prosecutors said during the jury trial.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper reduced Robertson’s sentence Wednesday to six years in prison, The Associated Press reported. The new sentence follows Cooper’s dismissal of one of Robertson’s convictions: obstructing the congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in June that a charge of obstructing an official proceeding must include proof that a defendant tried to tamper with or destroy documents — a distinction that did not apply to Robertson’s case, nor most of the hundreds of Jan. 6 criminal cases.
The Army veteran is the first Capitol riot defendant to be resentenced following the Supreme Court’s ruling. In court filings, prosecutors had urged the judge to preserve the original sentence.
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Robertson, who declined to address the court at his first sentencing hearing, told the judge Wednesday that he looks forward to returning home and rebuilding his life after prison, AP reported.
“I realize the positions that I was taking on that day were wrong,” he said of Jan. 6. “I’m standing before you very sorry for what occurred on that day.”
Robertson served four years in the U.S. Army from 1991 to 1994, and then joined the Army Reserve in 2001, his attorneys wrote in court documents. He deployed to Iraq in 2008 and was injured by gunshot and mortar shrapnel in Afghanistan in 2011, the documents state. He underwent 10 surgeries for his injuries.
After recuperating, Robertson joined the police department in Rocky Mount, Virginia, and became a sergeant. He was off duty but still working for the police department when he joined the Capitol riot. The town fired him after his arrest.
In a Facebook post on Nov. 7, 2020, Robertson said, “I’ve spent most of my adult life fighting a counter insurgency. (I’m) about to become part of one, and a very effective one.”
Before his initial sentencing in 2022, Robertson wrote a letter to the judge, saying he took full responsibility for his actions on Jan. 6 and “any poor decisions I made.”
He blamed the vitriolic content of his social media posts on a mix of stress, alcohol abuse and “submersion in deep ‘rabbit holes’ of election conspiracy theory.”
“I sat around at night drinking too much and reacting to articles and sites given to me by Facebook” algorithms, he wrote.
This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.
Nikki Wentling covers disinformation and extremism for Military Times. She's reported on veterans and military communities for eight years and has also covered technology, politics, health care and crime. Her work has earned multiple honors from the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, the Arkansas Associated Press Managing Editors and others.
