On Monday, a former police officer who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 was found guilty on all six charges at trial. Thomas Robertson, who was an officer in Rocky Mount, Virginia, when he entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, was arrested last January and fired by the city shortly thereafter.
The verdict given Robertson was another win for the Justice Department, which is overseeing an unprecedented investigation into the hundreds of people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. Robertson’s trial was the second Jan. 6 defendant to take his case to a jury. Jurors deliberated Friday afternoon and all day Monday before reaching a verdict just before 5:30 p.m.
Robertson faced six charges, including obstruction of an official proceeding, civil disorder, and entering and remaining is a restricted building or grounds while carrying a deadly or dangerous weapon. A Justice Department attorney argued that Robertson was “part of the problem” on Jan. 6 and “decided to take matters into his own hands” because he didn’t like the outcome of the election, and added that “this defendant gleefully put himself in the thick of the initial round of rioters who set off hours of chaos inside the Capitol.”
Nearly 800 people have been arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 attack, and almost 250 have pleaded guilty. In addition to the two jury trials thus far, two Jan. 6 defendants have resolved their cases through bench trials. More than 2,500 people entered the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack, and hundreds more assaulted law enforcement officers outside the building.
Editorial credit: Valerio Pucci / Shutterstock.com
