PITTSBURGH (TNS) — Nearly a year after a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in support of then-President Donald Trump, an FBI dragnet has swept up 727 accused rioters and counting.
Several of them are from Western Pennsylvania.
Inside the federal courthouse in the District of Columbia, judgment day has arrived for some.
The first to be sentenced was Russell Peterson, 35, of Rochester, who in December got a month in jail and a $500 restitution order for parading and demonstrating Jan. 6 in a Capitol building, a misdemeanor.
Peterson traveled to Washington with his mother and wife to protest the 2020 presidential election at Trump’s urging, said his lawyer, who argued that Trump, his family and various supporters and politicians should be held accountable for speeches that incited the rioters.
Next up will be Mitchell Vukich and Nicholas Perretta, friends from Beaver County set to be sentenced Wednesday for the same crime as Peterson.
The pair breached the Capitol building and bragged about it online, just as Peterson did.
And like many other rioters, they seemed to think they wouldn’t be penalized despite the fact that the world saw them on video inside the building amid a swirling crowd of Trump supporters.
After Vukich texted Perretta in April that the FBI had just questioned him, Perretta responded, “there’s been over 500 people charged, we will fight this no jail for us.”
”Exactly,” said Vukich. “I just can’t see us getting in trouble.”
Perretta, using an expletive, also told his buddy that he should have told the FBI to get lost.
A screen shot from a short video filmed by a rioter of Robert Morss, of Glenshaw, in a hideaway office for members of Congress during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot inside the Capitol in Washington. He is charged with 53 counts from his actions in the rioting that day.
In the end, both pleaded guilty. The government wants each to spend 30 days in jail and face a $500 restitution order, the same as Mr. Peterson.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob Strain said both deserve some time behind bars.
”Vukich claimed the defendants were some of the first inside,” he wrote in sentencing papers. “Vukich and the others who first breached the U.S. Capitol bear a special responsibility for this unparalleled crime because they emboldened the rioters who came behind them and were therefore each vitally important and thus responsible for the large crowd that overwhelmed the police officers through both violence and also sheer numbers.”
Vukich and Perretta also might get a rebuke from U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan.
Like many of her colleagues, she has not masked her outrage at the events of Jan. 6. Last month she sentenced Robert Palmer, a Florida man who attacked the Capitol while carrying a sign saying “Biden is a pedophile,” to more than five years for assaulting police with a wood plank and a fire extinguisher. It’s the longest sentence any rioter has received.
In a case of less serious conduct involving an Ohio couple, Chatkan imposed a term even stiffer than what the prosecution had requested, giving Brandon Miller 20 days in jail and his wife, Stephanie, 14 days for breaching the Capitol.
Prosecutors had asked for probation and home detention, but the judge indicated that wasn’t enough.
”The country is watching,” she said. “There have to be consequences for participating in the attempted violent overthrow of the government.”
Other judges have made similar statements.
The judge in the Peterson case, Amy Jackson, said it would be tough for her to show him leniency considering that he posted “I had fun lol” on Facebook.
”The ‘lol’ particularly stuck in my craw because, as I hope you’ve come to understand, nothing about Jan. 6th was funny,” she told him. “No one locked in a room, cowering under a table for hours, was laughing.”
While some rioters who faced misdemeanor charges have received probation, Strain, the prosecutor in the Vukich and Perretta case, said jail is still appropriate even for misdemeanors.
”Indeed, the government invites the court to join Judge [Royce] Lamberth’s admonition that, ‘I don’t want to create the impression that probation is the automatic outcome here because it’s not going to be,’” he wrote.
Others among the Pittsburgh region’s accused insurrectionists likely will end up with prison sentences for assaulting police and damaging property.
Chief among them is Robert Morss, 28, a former substitute teacher in the Shaler Area School District and an ex-Army Ranger, who is charged with 53 counts, including robbery and assault. He remains in custody pending trial. Prosecutors said he led the violence Jan. 6. In response to a recent motion he filed to be let out of jail, they noted a speech he wrote to deliver to a judge at his eventual sentencing in which he said he had no regrets for what he’d done.
Another likely prison candidate is Pauline Bauer, of Kane, who is seen on video surveillance screaming expletives for police to “bring Nancy Pelosi out here now,” along with other members of Congress, so they could be hanged. When an officer in riot gear pushes her back, she yells expletives and shoves the officer.
Her case is pending. A co-defendant, William Blauser Jr., of Ludlow, has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing.
Both were charged with entering restricted grounds, engaging in disruptive conduct on restricted grounds and violent entry of restricted grounds, and Bauer also is charged with obstruction of Congress.
Bauer and her lawyer recently filed a motion to dismiss the obstruction count on the grounds that she was exercising her First Amendment rights to protest.
”This argument is specious,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney James Dennis Peterson, saying she “intentionally invaded” the Capitol and impeded police.
Another rioter, Peter Schwartz, is likely to spend years in prison. A welder from Kentucky living in Uniontown, he is accused of seizing mace canisters from police and using them on officers, later boasting that he should “likely be in federal prison” for what he’d done.
Considering the violence he is accused of perpetrating, his online boasts and his prior felony record, that outcome seems certain.
