Peter Schwartz (photo, left), 49, a welder from Owensburg, Kentucky, drew the longest prison sentence yet given to a Jan. 6 rioter.
He deserves it. Schwartz has 38 prior convictions, 11 involving crimes of violence, some against police officers, which the judge factored that into his sentence.
AOL News says (here) that Schwartz was “armed with a wooden tire knocker and engaged in a series of assaults on officers.” He was the first rioter “to throw a folding chair at the line of officers protecting the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace.”
Prosecutors told the court, “By throwing that chair, Schwartz directly contributed to the fall of the police line that enabled rioters to flood forward and take over the entire terrace.”
He wasn’t through. “Schwartz then used chemical munitions, including pepper spray, that had been left behind by the fleeing officers,” the prosecutors continued, then he made his way to a tunnel entrance, where he again attacked officers with pepper spray before joining a “heave-ho” mob effort to push through the tunnel.
After the riot, Schwartz bragged about what he did, and raised money online by calling himself a “political prisoner” (see story here). The judge wasn’t having it. He got 14 years and 2 months behind bars.