Packer’s younger sister, Kimberly Rice, wrote a letter asking the judge for leniency. “He was more interested in relaying how he received hate mail and how he was 'hounded' by the media for interviews,” she added. “He told the agents he heard the shot and saw her fall back from the window she was trying to climb through,” Furst wrote in a court filing.įurst said Packer didn't express any remorse during his FBI interview. Packer told the FBI that he was about 10 to 12 feet away from a rioter, Ashli Babbitt, when a police officer fatally shot her as she tried to climb through the broken window of a barricaded door leading to the Speaker’s Lobby.
Packer, a resident of Newport News, Virginia, pleaded guilty in January to a misdemeanor count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, which carries a maximum sentence of six months of imprisonment. Packer declined to speak during Thursday's hearing because he didn't want his words “splashed out there” on social media, his lawyer told the judge. I just don't think it's appropriate to give him extra time because of that because he's allowed to wear it,” he said.īrennwald added that Packer was offended and angry to be labeled a white supremacist “because he doesn't see himself that way at all.” The defense lawyer said Packer wanted him to sue House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for linking him to white supremacy during a press conference several days after the riot. “It's just awful that he wore that shirt that day.
ROBERT PACKER FREE
Packer "wanted to support the subversion of our republic and keep a dictatorial ruler in place by force and violence,” Furst told the judge.ĭefense attorney Stephen Brennwald acknowledged that Packer's attire was “seriously offensive” but argued that it shouldn't be a sentencing factor because he has a free speech right to wear it. Packer “attacked the very government that gave him the freedom to express those beliefs, no matter abhorrent or evil they may be" when he joined the mob supporting then-President Donald Trump, the prosecutor said Attorney Mona Furst said she learned on Wednesday that Packer also wore an “SS" T-shirt - a reference to the Nazi Party paramilitary organization founded by Adolf Hitler - under his sweatshirt on Jan. It also bore the phrase “Work Brings Freedom,” a rough translation of the German words above the entrance gate to Auschwitz, the concentration camp in occupied Poland where Nazis killed more than 1 million men, women and children.Īssistant U.S. Packer’s sweatshirt depicted an image of a human skull above the words “Camp Auschwitz.” The word “Staff” was on the back. When FBI agents asked him why he wore it, he “fatuously” replied, “Because I was cold,” a federal prosecutor said in a court filing. Photographs of Packer wearing the sweatshirt went viral after the Jan. We don't know what the reason was because Mr. “It seems to me that he wore that sweatshirt for a reason.
The judge noted the “incredibly offensive” message on Packer's sweatshirt before imposing the sentence. District Judge Carl Nichols before he sentenced him during hearing held by video conference. Robert Keith Packer, 57, declined to address U.S. Capitol while wearing an antisemitic “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt over a Nazi-themed shirt was sentenced on Thursday to 75 days of imprisonment.
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