A Seattle man who punched two police officers during last year’s riot at the U.S. Capitol was sentenced to six months imprisonment on Thursday, as the Justice Department reached a milestone in one of the largest federal investigations in American history.
Mark Leffingwell, a 52-year-old military veteran who was wounded in Iraq, is at least the 100th person to be sentenced after pleading guilty to a Capitol riot-related charge, according to an Associated Press review of court records.
The judge who sentenced Leffingwell pushed back on a recent Republican National Committee resolution that accused the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack of leading a “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson also lamented that mainstream news outlets are still amplifying the lie that the 2020 presidential election was illegitimate and stolen from former President Donald Trump.
“And, worse, it has become heresy for a member of the former president’s party to say otherwise,” the judge said. “It needs to be crystal clear that it is not patriotism, it is not standing up for America, it is not legitimate political discourse and it is not justified to descend on the nation’s capital at the direction of a disappointed candidate and disrupt the electoral process.”
