Jessica Watkins: Oath Keepers member and Military veteran sentenced to eight.5 years in jail for January 6

Jessica Watkins, an Military veteran and member of the far-right Oath Keepers, was sentenced Friday to eight.5 years in jail for taking part in a plot to disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election culminating within the January 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol.

Decide Amit Mehta mentioned Watkins’ efforts on the Capitol had been “aggressive” and mentioned she didn’t have instant regret, despite the fact that she has since apologized.

“Your function that day was extra aggressive, extra assaultive, extra purposeful than maybe others’. And also you led others to meet your functions,” Mehta mentioned. “And there was not within the instant aftermath any sense of disgrace or contrition, simply the other. Your feedback had been celebratory and lacked an actual sense of the gravity of that day and your function in it.”

At trial, prosecutors confirmed proof that Watkins based and led a small militia in Ohio and mobilized her group in coordination with the Oath Keepers to Washington, DC, on January 6. Watkins and her counterparts in the end marched in tactical gear to the Capitol and inspired different rioters to push previous police exterior the Senate chamber.

“I used to be simply one other fool working across the hallway,” Watkins informed the court docket earlier than the sentence was handed down Friday. “However idiots are accountable, and in the present day you’ll maintain this fool accountable.”

Two of Watkins’ codefendants, Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs, had been sentenced Thursday to 18 and 12 years in jail, respectively, for seditious conspiracy.

In contrast to Rhodes and Meggs, Watkins was acquitted of the highest cost of seditious conspiracy, however convicted of conspiracy to hinder an official continuing – which carries the identical 20-year most jail sentence as seditious conspiracy – in addition to different felony fees.

“No person would counsel you’re Stewart Rhodes, and I don’t assume you’re Kelly Meggs,” Mehta informed Watkins on Friday. “However your function in these occasions is greater than that of only a foot soldier. I believe you’ll be able to admire that.”

Watkins, who’s transgender, gave emotional testimony in the course of the trial about struggling together with her identification within the Military whereas the “don’t ask, don’t inform” coverage was nonetheless in impact, and about being dragged into the underbelly of conspiracy theories across the 2020 presidential election.

She tearfully reiterated to the choose on Friday that she was “very fearful and paranoid” at the moment, and that whereas “for a very long time I used to be in denial of my very own culpability,” she now “can see my actions for what they had been – they had been fallacious and I’m sorry.”

“I perceive now that my presence in and across the Capitol that day most likely impressed these people to a level,” Watkins mentioned. “They noticed us there and that most likely fired them up. Oath Keepers are right here, they usually had been patting us on the again.”

She continued: “How many individuals went in due to us? We’re liable for that.”

Prosecutor Alexandra Hughes disagreed, telling Mehta that Watkins was not remorseful.

Hughes quoted a January telephone name from jail, through which Watkins allegedly mentioned of officers on the Capitol “boo hoo the poor little law enforcement officials, bought just a little PTSD, waaaa, I needed to stand there and maintain a door open for individuals waaaaaa.”

“It’s maybe an unsurprising truth of human nature that those that are subjected to injustice sometimes deliver injustice on others,” Hughes mentioned. “We don’t dispute what she has been by means of, however what she did on that day has deep and devastating – devastating – results on people who confirmed as much as work that day and by no means did something to Jessica Watkins.”

Earlier than handing down the sentence, Mehta addressed Watkins’ traumatic historical past immediately, saying that “I believe you wouldn’t have a human … who heard your testimony and wouldn’t have been moved.”

“Your story itself exhibits a substantial amount of braveness and resilience,” Mehta mentioned. “You will have overcome loads, and you’re to be held out as somebody who can really be a task mannequin for different individuals in that journey. And I say that at a time when people who find themselves trans in our nation are so typically vilified and used for political functions.”

The choose added: “It makes it all of the extra laborious for me to grasp the shortage of empathy for individuals who suffered that day.”

Kenneth Harrelson, an Oath Keeper from Florida who chanted “treason” contained in the Capitol on January 6, was additionally sentenced Friday to 4 years in jail for his function within the sprawling conspiracy.

Prosecutors alleged that Harrelson was appointed the “floor group chief” of the Oath Keepers on January 6, stockpiled weapons at a so-called fast response power simply exterior Washington, DC, and moved by means of the Capitol chanting “treason.”

In an handle to the choose earlier than he was sentenced, Harrelson mentioned that he has “no gripes towards the federal government, then or now” and merely “bought within the fallacious automobile on the fallacious time and went to the fallacious place with the fallacious individuals.”

“I didn’t have a clue,” Harrelson mentioned. “It’s to not say I didn’t have indicators or warnings that I ought to have paid consideration to, but it surely simply didn’t register.”

He continued, at occasions sobbing and supporting his physique with a lectern contained in the properly of the court docket: “I don’t know why. I’ve destroyed my life and I’m totally accountable.”

This story has been up to date with extra developments.