WASHINGTON – The federal judge overseeing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee donald trumpThe Jan. 6 criminal case on Thursday sentenced a Capitol rioter who assaulted police officers to more than 4.5 years in prison.
Anthony Mastanduno – known to online detectives as “Grandpa Shield” – pleaded guilty to nine felonies in March, when Trump was originally supposed to be on trial in his own Capitol attack case, according to the trial schedule set by Judge Tanya Chutkan in August. (Trump’s case was paused while the Supreme Court considers his immunity claim.)
Mastanduno’s arrest occurred in August 2023, just weeks after Trump was arrested in the January 6 case against him brought by special counsel Jack Smith.
But Mastanduno’s case was not subject to the same delays as the Trump case. Chutkan ordered Mastanduno’s arrest after he pleaded guilty in March. Trump, by comparison, will appear Thursday night in a debate with President Joe Biden.
Federal Public Ministry had argued for six years behind bars for Mastanduno, saying he “participated in some of the worst violence inflicted on law enforcement officers in the Lower West Terrace Tunnel during the attack on the United States Capitol.”
A police officer attacked by Mastanduno called January 6 “horrible” and “life-changing,” saying the memories left him with trouble sleeping and trusting others. He considers January 6th “forever [his] [d]hardest day,” prosecutors wrote.
A defense memorandum cited Mastanduno’s work as a volunteer firefighter and his time in the Marine Corps, and includes a lengthy redacted section on the 61-year-old’s physical and mental health.
In the nearly 3.5 years since the attack on the Capitol, federal prosecutors have charged more than 1,400 people and secured convictions against more than 1,000 defendants. More than 540 of these defendants were sentenced to prison terms ranging from a few days behind bars to 22 years in federal prison to a Proud Boys leader convicted of seditious conspiracy.
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
