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The man who was caught carrying House Speaker and California Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s lectern during the incident at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 has learned his fate.
Adam Christian Johnson was sentenced to 75 days behind bars and a fine of $5,000 by U.S. District Senior Judge Reggie B. Walton, The Epoch Times reported.
He was convicted and sentenced on one count of entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds, which is a Class A federal misdemeanor.
The judge has allowed him to serve the sentence at a facility nearest to his home so that his kids can visit him. Given credit for time served he faces another 60 days behind bars.
“I do consider this to be a very serious offense,” the judge said. “It’s one of the darkest days, I think unfortunately, that this country has ever suffered. … It’s a slippery slope from what happened on that day to what may happen the next time around. I just hope it’s not the case, but the precedent has been set.”
Johnson attended President Donald J. Trump’s speech at the Ellipse on Jan. 6. Prosecutors allege that Johnson ran to the Capitol when he heard rioters had breached police lines.
Johnson was outside the entrance to the House of Representatives as rioters tried to break through the doors. On the other side of the barricaded door stood three plainclothes law enforcement officers with their handguns trained on the broken windows in the doors.
“He was undeterred by his fellow rioters’ attempts to break down the doors to the House Chamber, where Johnson believed members of Congress were still counting votes,” prosecutors said. “Indeed, he stood by for over ten minutes watching their efforts and even encouraged them to use a bust of George Washington to smash the House doors open.”
Johnson is a stay-at-home dad whose wife works as a physician and prosecutors said “their financial situation is so favorable that Johnson has not had to work for the past 11 years.”
His defense attorney, Dan Eckhart, did not care for the insinuation that stay-at-home parenting not being a real job or that his client “is an entitled or privileged person and he hadn’t worked for 11 years.”
“Nothing could be farther from the truth,” he said, arguing that his client was a nearly 4.0 grade-point-average pre-med student at the University of South Florida. “So Mr. Johnson decided to give everything up, gave up his whole career. …Instead of going to med school, being a doctor, he’s a stay-at-home dad.”
The judge also took Umbridge with the prosecution’s insinuation about the defendant.
“I respect a man who forsakes his career to raise his children. I’ve no problem with that,” the judge said. “I think that’s a great thing. Five boys, I know it’s a hard job.
“A lot of people think a parent … staying at home taking care of kids is an easy job,” he said. “I know it’s not, so I commend you for that.”
But he also said that the fact that Johnson is a dad is a reason for him to not have been involved in the activities at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
“It’s mind-boggling to me how somebody who has that responsibility and has what is purported the intellectual capacity you have, to find yourself coming all the way up here to Washington to do something like you did,” he said.
The defendant said that he spoke to his kids about what he did.
“The night I was taken into custody to serve my time in Pinellas (jail), I brought the boys downstairs and had a conversation about it,” he said. “I told them, ‘I’m going to jail because I broke the law, I did something wrong.’”
