Timothy Hale-Cusanelli was convicted Friday on all five charges including obstruction of an official proceeding, a felony charge, according to the Justice Department. He was discharged from the Army Reserves after his arrest.
“I didn’t know the Capitol building was the same as the congressional building,” Hale-Cusanelli said Thursday, according to NBC News.
Hale-Cusanelli, who studied American history in community college and texted friends about the electoral count process, added that he did not know members of Congress would be in the building.
“I know this sounds idiotic, but I’m from New Jersey,” he said. “I feel like an idiot, it sounds idiotic, and it is.”
Hale-Cusanelli admitted during the trial that he entered the Capitol and his defense lawyer said that he had engaged in criminal activity. He could also be seen in video evidence yelling female-specific profanity to a police officer before waving other rioters into the building.
After entering the building, he could be seen “stomping dramatically on the Capitol floor and kicking the walls of the building,” prosecutors said in court documents. He could also be heard participating in a chant of “Stop the Steal.”
Prosecutors portrayed Hale-Cusanelli as a white supremacist with Nazi sympathies, including photographs where he appeared to dress like Hitler and memes referring to Black people by racial slurs and mocking the death of George Floyd.
Hale-Cusanelli had contended that he should have been released from custody ahead of the trial because he was simply “following the entreaties of then commander in chief, President [Donald] Trump.”
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