AP
This Thursday, the owner of a Georgia business who boasted about throwing a police officer into the mob that entered the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, was sentenced to five years in prison for his repeated attacks on public order during the insurrection. .
Jack Wade Whitton struck an officer with a metal crutch and dragged him, head-first and face-down, into the crowd on the lower west terrace of the Capitol. Whitton later bragged in a text message that he “would have thrown it at people.”
About 20 minutes later, Whitton tried to throw another officer into the crowd, prosecutors said. He also kicked, threatened and threw a construction cone at officers who were trying to contain the mob of supporters of then-President Donald Trump.
“You're going to die tonight!” he shouted at police after punching a riot officer's shield.
Whitton, originally from Locust Grove, Georgia, said he regretted his actions on Jan. 6 before District Judge Rudolph Contreras sentenced him to four years and nine months in prison. The 33-year-old man will be taken into account for the three years he has spent in prison since his arrest.
“I tell you this confidently: I have changed,” Whitton told the judge.
Whitton, who pleaded guilty last year to an assault charge, told the judge that he has never been a “political person.”
“I have never been problematic. “I have always been a hard-working and law-abiding citizen,” he stated.
The judge noted that videos of Whitton attacking police are “horrifying.”
“I was really out of control,” he told her.
Prosecutors recommended a prison sentence of eight years and one month for Whitton, who owned and operated his own fence construction company before his arrest in April 2021.
