WASHINGTON — A Jan. 6 rioter who smashed in a window at the U.S. Capitol invoked Jeffrey Epstein moments after he was sentenced to five months in federal prison Thursday.
Ohio’s Troy Faulkner — who smashed in a window at the U.S. Capitol while wearing a jacket bearing his painting company’s name and phone number — was handed a five-month sentence by Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell on Thursday.
Faulkner told the court he supported former President Donald Trump because he believed Trump was “combatting human trafficking,” a seeming reference to the QAnon conspiracy theory. Faulkner cited inflated numbers about the number of children who go missing every year.
Howell noted that Faulkner burned the “Faulkner Painting” jacket he wore at the U.S. Capitol, and questioned whether Faulkner had actually stopped believing Trump’s lies about the 2020 presidential election, as his lawyer had implied in a sentencing memo.
After Faulkner’s lawyer John Machado said that Faulkner “was and still is a fan” of Trump, Howell asked whether he still believes everything that Trump says. Machado said his client now knows that Trump is not the legitimate president.
Howell said it was reasonable to question whether Jan. 6 defendants like Faulkner were “still susceptible to a giant lie” and could engage in political violence in the future.
While leaving the courthouse after his sentencing, Faulkner walked about to news cameras outside and made a comment to the media about Epstein.
“How about that Epstein island list? How ’bout that one? Wanna talk about that? Where’s the Epstein Island list?” Faulkner said, referring to sex trafficking by the disgraced financier, who has been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories. Epstein died by suicide while in federal custody, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted in the sex trafficking scheme in December 2021.
Faulkner, his attorney said during his sentencing hearing, was “at a better place” than he was when he smashed in a Capitol window. But Faulkner seemed to go a bit off script during his comments to the judge and suggested that rioters were somehow set up by police.
“We were told by the president to go there,” Faulkner said before the judge. “I wasn’t in my best state of mind. … I’ve been remorseful every day.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
