Jack Wade Whitton of Locust Grove had been drinking liquor and taking amphetamines all day on Jan. 6, 2021, when he was caught on video striking police officers with a metal crutch in some of the most brutal hand-to-hand combat during the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“You’re going to die tonight,” the 33-year-old former personal trainer shouted at one point.
As rioters continued to push against the police line preventing them from entering the Capitol from the Lower West Terrace, Whitton joined in dragging a fallen officer head first and face down into the crowd where rioters continued to beat on him.
In an Instagram message to a friend later that day, Whitton said the downed officer, who survived the attack, was “a bad cop.”
“I fed him to the people,” he wrote. “Idk his status. And I don’t care tbh.”
Credit: U.S. Department of Justice
Credit: U.S. Department of Justice
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras sentenced Whitton to four years and nine months in prison and a $2,000 fine for assaulting a police officer with a dangerous weapon. The prison term will be followed by three years of supervised release.
The sentence comes 19 months after Whitton took a plea deal, pleading guilty to assaulting police during the Capitol riot and agreeing to testify against his eight other co-defendants charged in the same attack. The judge previously sentenced seven of Whitton’s co-defendants to prison terms ranging from two years and six months to five years and 10 months.
Contreras called Whitton’s violent behavior during the attack “gruesome.”
“You really were out of control,” he told Whitton.
Whitton expressed remorse for his behavior, claiming to not be “a political person.”
“I’ve never been a troublemaker. I’ve always been a hard worker and a law-abiding citizen,” he said.
Credit: U.S. Department of Justice
Credit: U.S. Department of Justice
That wasn’t the case on Jan. 6 when Whitton and co-defendant Justin Jersey forced their way to the front of the crowd clogging a tunnel leading to a Senate-wing door. Prosecutors wrote in a sentencing recommendation Whitton and Jersey’s attack, which came during a lull in the fighting, renewed “the rageful onslaught of violence that followed.”
Prosecutors had asked Contreras to sentence Whitton to 97 months in prison and a fine of $61,685, an amount that matched how much he had raised on the Christian-oriented crowdfunding site GiveSendGo since his arrest.
“Whitton should not be able to ‘capitalize’ on his participation in the January 6 riot in this way,” prosecutors wrote.
In a March filing, Whitton’s defense attorney said the money Whitton raised on the site had already been spent on legal fees, travel expenses and a psychological exam prior to sentencing.
At sentencing, Whitton told Contreras he was a changed person. His attorney, Pittsburgh-based Komron Jon Maknoon, said in a filing that Whitton had come to Washington at the request of his longtime girlfriend and was “not interested in former President (Donald) Trump or politics.” Whitton has a history of drug and alcohol abuse and was “highly intoxicated” by the time he reached the Capitol, Maknoon wrote.
Whitton has been incarcerated for more than three years since his March 2021 arrest, time that will be credited to fulfilling his sentence.
So far, 33 people with Georgia ties have been charged in the long-running investigation into the Capitol riot, of which 22 have either pleaded guilty or been found guilty at trial.
Nationally, nearly 1,400 people have been charged in the riot and nearly 800 have pleaded guilty. An additional 156 have been found guilty at trial on a variety of felony and misdemeanor charges.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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