A New Jersey gym owner on Friday became the first person to plead guilty to assaulting a law enforcement officer during the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
A New Jersey gym owner and a Washington state man on Friday became the first people charged in the Jan.6 riot at the U.S. Capitol to plead guilty to assaulting a law enforcement officer during the deadly siege. The pair of plea deals with federal prosecutors could be a benchmark for dozens of other cases in which Capitol rioters are charged with attacking police as part of an effort to halt the certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory. Both defendants face more than three years in prison if a judge adheres to estimated sentencing guidelines spelled out in the plea agreements. The estimated sentencing guidelines for Scott Kevin Fairlamb range from about 3 1/2 to 4 1/4 years in prison. But the judge isn’t bound by that recommendation when he sentences Fairlamb, a 44-year-old former mixed martial arts fighter who owned Fairlamb Fit gym in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey. Fairlamb’s lawyer and prosecutors can seek a sentence above or below those guidelines. The sentencing guidelines in Devlyn Thompson’s plea deal recommend a slightly higher sentence than Fairlamb, ranging from less than four years to 4 3/4 years in prison. After Fairlamb’s hearing, Thompson,28, of Puyallup, Washington, pleaded guilty to assaulting a police officer with a dangerous weapon, a baton. The same judge who accepted Fairlamb’s guilty plea ordered Thompson to be jailed in Seattle. Thompson had been free since his participation in the Capitol riot. The pleas come less than two weeks after a group of police officers testified at a congressional hearing about their harrowing confrontations with the mob of insurrectionists. Five officers who were at the Capitol that day have died, four of them by suicide. The Justice Department has said that rioters assaulted approximately 140 police officers on Jan.6. About 80 of them were U.S. Capitol Police officers and about 60 were from the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department. Fairlamb, whose brother is a U.S. Secret Service agent, was one of the first people to breach the Capitol after other rioters smashed windows using riot shields and kicked out a locked door, according to federal prosecutors. After leaving the building, Fairlamb harassed a line of police officers, shouting in their faces and blocking their progress through the mob, prosecutors wrote in a court filing.
