A 56-year-old black man was sentenced to five years and three months in prison Tuesday for his involvement in the Jan. 6 incident.
Mark Ponder, a resident of Washington D.C., and former constituent services coordinator for the D.C. city council, pleaded guilty in April to assaulting three police officers with poles. His sentence is tied for the longest jail sentence levied so far against those involved in the riot, which has often been dubbed as “white supremacist” by prominent Democrats and officials.
“The violent, deadly insurrection on the Capitol nine months ago, it was about white supremacy, in my opinion,” President Joe Biden said at an event in October of last year.
“These displays of white supremacy are not new,” Lecia Brooks, chief of staff for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said of the riot. “Now it’s just reached a fever pitch.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate the attack was racially motivated.
“The attackers on Jan. 6 included a number … of what we would call militia violent extremism. And we have had some already arrested who we would put in the category of racially motivated violent extremism, white, as well,” Wray said, according to the Washington Post.
Ponder struck officers with a pole, before law enforcement tackled him to the ground. A voice can be heard on video of the incident saying, “You gonna have to kill me today. You gonna have to kill me.”
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