Former Virginia police officer sentenced to 87 months in prison for role in January 6th riot

12 August 2022

Although it remains to be seen whether or not former President Donald Trump will face any type of federal charges in connection with the January 6, 2021 insurrection, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has prosecuted many of the Trump supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol Building that day. The DOJ certainly hasn’t had a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to prosecuting Capitol rioters; the charges have ranged from severe to relatively mild. And one of the harsher sentences came on Thursday, August 11, when former Rocky Mount, Virginia police officer Thomas Robertson was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison for his role in the assault on the Capitol.

The Washington Post’s Rachel Weiner, in an article published on August 12, notes that a jury found Robertson guilty of “six crimes, including using a large wooden stick to block police outside the Capitol and destroying his phone when he got home.” And another former Rocky Mount police officer, Jacob Fracker, pled guilty to a conspiracy charge.

“At his sentencing, Robertson depicted his actions on January 6 as an aberration in the life of a respected member of a law-abiding and respectable community,” Weiner reports. “The government’s filings suggest he became radicalized under the influence of those around him, including the chief of a small neighboring police department and a retired FBI agent. Prosecutors took the unusual step of publishing two detailed FBI investigations into the claims Robertson made in his appeal for mercy.”

Part of the evidence against Robertson, according to Weiner, was a “text conversation from March 2021” in which Robertson told former Boones Mill, Virginia Police Chief Dennis M. Deacon, “I can kill every agent that they send for at least two weeks.” Robertson, Weiner reports, also told Deacon he was “prepared to die in battle.” And Deacon responded that Robertson needed to “be smart, pick battles, plan logistics, very carefully recruit and hope it’s not going to come down to it.”

The judge in the case, Christopher Cooper, said he found it especially disturbing that Robertson was still threatening violence in March 2021 even though police officers had been seriously injured during the Capitol attack two months earlier.

Fracker’s sentencing is scheduled for Tuesday, August 16.

Weiner reports, “In his letter to the court, Fracker said he had been labeled a ‘rat,’ a ‘snitch’ and a ‘back stabber’ by community members for testifying against Robertson. ‘It really is just heartbreaking,’ he said. Robertson was a mentor to him and a ‘once valued father figure,’ Fracker wrote.”

According to Weiner, “Robertson was released after his arrest in January 2021 but was jailed months later after going on what Cooper described as a ‘remarkable shopping spree for high-powered assault weapons’ while becoming ‘further radicalized.’ Robertson could be charged with illegal firearm possession, the judge noted.”

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