Capitol rioter who sprayed cop Brian Sicknick with bear spray is sentenced to 80 months in prison 

Capitol Hill rioter Julian Khater was sentenced to 80 months in prison for his role in the pepper spray assault of police officer Brian Sicknick, who died the day after the January 6, 2021 riots.

The sentence is slightly less than the 90 months prosecutors sought for Khater, 32, who deployed pepper spray at Sicknick and two other police officers and pleaded guilty last year to two counts of assault on police. Khater will also have to pay a $10,000 fine.

“I took every possible change to improve myself as a person,” Khater said. ‘What happened on January 6th, there are no words for it… I wish I could take it back.’

Sicknick died of a stroke the next day. Although the medical examiner, Francisco J. Díaz, later attributed his death to natural causes, he told the Washington Post that he believed that “everything that happened” on January 6, 2021 played a role in his death. .

Thousands of supporters of Donald Trump stormed the Capitol that day in an attempt to overturn his electoral defeat.

George Tanios, 41, of Morgantown, West Virginia, was sentenced to time served after pleading guilty last year to lesser disorderly conduct on restricted grounds. Prosecutors had been asking the judge to give him credit for the time he served in pretrial detention.

His lawyers have told the judge that his client “deeply regrets” his actions.

Before Friday’s sentencing, Sicknick’s relatives sent letters to US District Judge Thomas Hogan, asking him to impose the harshest sentences possible.

“I don’t know what kind of upbringing you had… what might have happened in your childhood that contributed to your deceptive sense of right and wrong,” Sicknick’s mother, Gladys Sicknick, wrote, addressing her son’s attacker.

If I were your mother, I would be ashamed to have a son like you. I couldn’t bear to look at you, ever again. Which is how I feel right now. Let this be the last time, Mr. Khater.

In his letter, Brian Sicknick’s brother, Kenneth Sicknick, refused to call both defendants by name.

Humans have names. Dogs have names. Pet rocks are given names. The two defendants are not worthy of having names or being treated as such,’ she wrote.

Khater and Tanios are two of more than 950 people charged in connection with the assault on the Capitol. Four participants were killed in the chaos, and five police officers, including Sicknick, died afterwards, some by suicide.

Prosecutors have said that Tanios drove from his home in West Virginia to pick up Khater in New Jersey before heading to Washington before the riots.

After attending a rally, they joined the mob heading to the Capitol, although there is no evidence that they planned to enter the building or block the certification of electoral votes.

They arrived with two canisters of bear spray, which they did not use, and two canisters of pepper spray, one of which Khater did use.

In one video, Khater can be heard saying “Give me that bear shit” before reaching for Tanios’ backpack.

“The tragic passing of Office Sicknick, so close in time to the traumatic events of that day, underscores the gravity of Khater’s crime,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum to the judge.

Khater’s lawyer is also asking the judge to impose a time served sentence, noting that his client has been locked up since his arrest in March 2021, has been subjected to “inhumane conditions” and already suffers from anxiety since fleeing from his family from Lebanon during the Israel-Hezbollah war.

“Whether it was simply the heat of that moment or the addition of some lingering trauma from having fled Lebanon while under bombardment, something in Julian was triggered,” his attorney Chad Seigel wrote in his sentencing memorandum to the judge.

Dozens of uniformed and plain-clothes Capitol Police officers attended Friday’s massive sentencing hearing, which lasted more than four hours.

One attendee left small packets of tissues for police officers to use during the emotionally charged hearing.

Five of Sicknick’s relatives and Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards, who was also a victim of Khater’s pepper spray attack, addressed the courthouse.

Edwards, who received the Presidential Citizens’ Medal earlier this year for his bravery during the attack on the Capitol, tearfully told the judge that he suffers from “survivor’s guilt” over the death of his colleague.

“I felt like the worst kind of officer,” he said. ‘Someone who didn’t help his friend couldn’t help his friend.’

Hogan said he could not sentence Khater for Sicknick’s death because there was no basis for doing so in the coroner’s report. However, he said that he was distraught by Khater’s behaviour.

“I cannot find a basis for accepting an assault with a dangerous weapon on a police officer,” he said.

‘It doesn’t make sense to me.’