WASHINGTON — A Republican former candidate for governor of Michigan should spend three months in federal prison for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, federal prosecutors argued in a sentencing memo filed Tuesday night.
Ryan Kelley, 42, who was arrested in June 2022, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count in July, admitting that he “rushed past U.S. Capitol police officers and started climbing the northwest scaffolding” and encouraged other members of the mob to rush toward the building.
Prosecutors said Kelley also helped ripped a protective tarp covering the stage where Joe Biden was ultimately inaugurated as president two weeks later, on Jan. 20, 2021.
U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper is set to sentence Kelley on Oct. 17.
Kelley, federal prosecutors wrote, “did not directly engage in violence,” but he “encouraged, facilitated, and celebrated violence at the Capitol” on Jan. 6.
“He shouted into the already riled up crowd; he consistently beckoned the crowd of rioters forward, closer towards the Capitol Building and police; he supported another rioter as he was moving a metal bike rack towards the front of the mob on the Northwest stairs, towards those rioters who were closer to officers; and he took a photograph of human blood by the stairs,” they wrote.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
