A Maryland man who drove from his home to join the rioters at the US Capitol seeking to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election on January 6, 2021 has been sentenced to five months in prison.
According to federal prosecutors, 27-year-old David Alan Blair left his home in Clarksburg, Maryland, and drove to Washington, DC after the assault on the Capitol had begun. He brought with him a Confederate flag attached to a lacrosse stick, and, after refusing to leave an area on the West Lawn of the Capitol, used it to shove a police officer.
According to Mr Blair’s attorney, the police officer responded in kind — striking Mr Blair three times in the head with his baton. Mr Blair’s attorney said his client was left bleeding and concussed.
Nevertheless, Mr Blair pleaded guilty in March to a felony charge of interfering with law enforcement during a civil disorder.
That crime carries with it a maximum prison sentence of five years, but U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper sentenced Mr Blair to five months in prison and ordered him to pay $2,000 in restitution. Mr Blair will also be on a supervised release for 18 months following the conclusion of his prison sentence.
Mr Blair is one of more than 800 people to have been charged with criminal offenses for their participation in the Capitol riot, though leading figures like President Donald Trump have yet to be charged. More than 300 of those people have been sentenced.
Mr Blair told investigators that he did not drive himself to the riot to help in any effort to keep Mr Trump installed as president, but rather to “fight Antifa” and carried a knife with a serrated blade in his backpack. According to reporting from the Associated Press, Mr Blair said that he had also been messaging with an antisemitic individual who held Israel responsible for the world’s problems.
“Blair further explained that as a result of these discussions he came to believe the United States was ‘falling apart’ and that he had to ‘stand up’ to communism,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Liebman wrote in a court filing.
Mr Blair, who is from South Carolina originally, was not the only person at the Capitol who displayed Confederate imagry. Several other men who carried the Confederate flag, a symbol of white supremacy, have also been convicted on charges stemming from their conduct on January 6.
