Nazi sympathizer Timothy Hale-Cusanelli was sentenced to four years in prison by a federal judge on Thursday for his involvement in the Capitol Insurrection in January of last year, according to multiple US reports.
The judge said that Cusanelli had "racist and antisemitic" motivations for breaking into the US Capitol and attempting to disrupt the election certification process and that the defendant's actions were hostile to religious minorities "including encouraging a recent rise in antisemitic attacks across the country," according to the New York Times report.
Cusanelli, 32, said in his defense that he didn't know that Congress met at the Capitol, to which the judge called his statement a lie.
"You absolutely knew what you and others were doing," District Judge Trevor McFadden told Cusanelli.
Cusanelli's lawyer acknowledged that he made abhorrent comments in his life but said that Cusanelli had not committed the same crimes as many of the other pro-Trump rioters at the insurrection.
A memo filed last week saw that Cusanelli made claims to his roommate that “Jewish interests [were] puppeteering the media, major corporations, the Democratic Party, Joe Biden and the government as a whole.”
Despite this, Cusanelli testified that he isn't antisemitic and that he's half-Jewish.
“Jewish interests are puppeteering the media, major corporations, the Democratic Party, Joe Biden and the government as a whole.”
Timothy Hale-Cusanelli
At the insurrection itself, Cusanelli yelled for fellow rioters to "advance" into the Capitol building and helped pull a rioter away from a Capitol officer who was trying to detain him, CNN reported.
Who is Timothy Hale-Cusanelli?
The defendant also liked to dress up as Adolf Hitler, as seen in photos posted on US reports. Before joining other pro-Trump rioters on January 6, Cusanelli was a naval station security guard, US sources reported.
He was convicted of all five criminal charges he faced a few months after the insurrection, including obstruction of the 2020 election results certification at a Washington Federal District Court. Prosecutors then sought 6.5 years in prison for the Nazi sympathizer, according to NBC News.
Prosecutors at the trial on Thursday also said he was "extremely tolerant of violence and death" and lied under oath, as well as stating that he “subscribes to White Supremacist and Nazi-Sympathizer ideologies that drive his enthusiasm for another civil war.”
Cusanelli was also sentenced to supervised release for three years and a fine of $2,000 in restitution, CNN reported.