A federal judge on Friday sentenced Capitol rioter Julian Khater, who assaulted United States Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick with pepper spray on January 6, 2021, to 80 months behind bars, multiple news outlets reported.
“I don’t know what got into you,” US District Judge Thomas Hogan told the MAGA fanatic as he imposed the yearslong prison sentence, according to CNN. “Somehow you got determined to push your way through the crowd.”
Khater pleaded guilty in September to two counts of assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers with a dangerous weapon. His co-defendant, George Tanios, pleaded guilty last summer to disorderly conduct and entering and remaining in a restricted building, CBS News reported.
Khater took a white can of bear spray from Tanios’s backpack, walked up to the line of officers and, as rioters started pulling on the bike rack barrier separating them and the police, Khater sprayed multiple officers – including Sicknick – who had to retreat from the line.
Officer Sicknick died the day after the attack, after suffering several strokes. Washington, DC’s chief medical examiner, Francisco Diaz, said the riot and “all that transpired played a role in his condition.”
According to the plea agreements, Tanios bought two cans of bear spray in preparation for his trip with Khater to Washington on January 6, 2021. During the Capitol attack, when the two men arrived near a line of police officers by the steps of the Capitol, Khater said to Tanios, “Give me that bear s**t,” according to the plea.
Sicknick’s partner, Sandra Garza, asked the judge to impose the maximum sentence for both men.
“I realize it will not bring back Brian, nor give him peace in his last moments on earth, but it will give some sense of justice in my universe,” Garza wrote to the judge, according to CNN.
