A Florida man Friday was sentenced to 63 months in prison for assaulting police officers during the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
Robert Scott Palmer received the longest sentence announced to date for participants in the Jan. 6 assault, WUSA reported.
Palmer also received an additional 36 months of supervised release and was ordered to pay $2,000 in restitution, WFTS reported.
Palmer, who prosecutors said traveled from Florida to attend then-President Donald Trump’s Washington, D.C. rally, pleaded guilty to assaulting police with a wooden plank and fire extinguisher on Jan. 6.
“SENTENCE: U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan sentences Robert Scott Palmer to 63 months in prison for one count of assaulting police with a dangerous weapon. He will have to serve 36 months of supervised release once out. #CapitolRiot @wusa9 @EricFlackTV,” WUSA investigative reporter Jordan Fischer tweeted Friday afternoon.
Palmer, 54, had sought a sentence of 24 months in prison. The Tampa Bay Times reported he had asked for mercy from Chutkan, apologizing in a lengthy handwritten note for his role in the attack.
Chutkan said Palmer has received “significant concessions” from the Department of Justice, and it had fallen to her to consider deterrence.
“‘Mr. Palmer, you’ve expressed remorse. And by all appearances, it’s genuine. I hope it is. I cannot look into your heart or your mind,” Judge Chutkan says. “It is the way we pick ourselves up after our mistakes that shows our character,'” Fischer, recalling the judge, tweeted.
Chutkan said she would recommend that Palmer be housed in a federal prison close to his home in Clearwater, Florida, but could not guarantee that would happen, WFTS reported.
In his four-page letter to Chutkan, Palmer said he understood that he and others were lied to and manipulated by those in power.
“They kept spitting out the false narrative about a stolen election and how it was ‘our duty’ to stand up to tyranny,” Palmer wrote, the Times said. “Little did I realize that they were the tyrannical ones, desperate to hold onto power at any cost, even by creating the chaos they knew would happen with such rhetoric.”
