A man who used a police shield to crush a D.C. Metropolitan Police officer during the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was handed a lengthy prison sentence this Friday, NBC News reported.
Patrick McCaughey III, who was nicknamed #ThePinman by online sleuths, partook in some of the most violent moments of the riot. Judge Trevor McFadden, a Donald Trump appointee, sentenced McCaughey to seven-and-a-half years in federal prison.
McCaughey’s legal team said that his actions were “motivated by a misunderstanding as to the facts surrounding the 2020 election” and that he “knew next to nothing about the 2020 election and listened to sources of information that were clearly false.”
Prosecutors pointed out that McCaughey scaled the scaffolding that had been set up for Joe Biden’s inauguration before joining the mob in the tunnel and using the stolen police shield against Officer Daniel Hodges, who read a statement at Friday’s sentencing.
“At a time when we are struggling to field enough police to maintain public safety, Mr. McCaughey took part in an assault that removed 50 officers from duty,” Hodges said, according to the statement. “That’s 50 officers that no longer have my back when I’m on a call, 50 officers that can no longer protect the city, and 50 officers that won’t be there the next time a would-be dictator decides to try his luck against these United States.”
Hodges previously testified at trial about being crushed by the police shield.
“As there are so many people pushing forward on that one object, a hard object, unyielding, pushing into you, doing what it’s designed to do, is repel a body, but being used on the police,” Hodges testified. “It’s much greater. It’s inflexible. There’s no good way to fight back against it, really. It just — you have to endure the pressure that it creates.”
Prosecutors said that McCaughey showed “an absolute disregard for the rule of law coupled with a willingness to incite and engage in violence,” adding that the lengthy sentence was needed to “deter others from not only committing the crime but taking the stand and engaging in dishonesty.”
McCaughey’s sister, Maria McCaughey, wrote a letter to the court saying that her brother had been radicalized because of their father who only watched “Fox News and Turner Classic Movies.”
“I believe my father’s dedication to ignoring all issues that did not interest him, and his tendency to cut out those who disagreed with him forced my brother to adapt to his interests once again and therefore, radicalize himself too. I firmly believe that my brother would not have gone so far to the extreme without his need to cultivate a positive relationship with my father, and that he would not have been anywhere near the Capitol building on January 6, 2021 without my father’s fervor about a ‘stolen election,’” Maria McCaughey wrote.
