A Kentucky welder who never entered the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced Friday to a stunning 14 years in prison, the longest sentence to date for any Jan. 6er, and longer than the term of his convicted murderer prison mate.
Peter Schwartz, a 47-year-old Army reservist, gave a phone interview Saturday to the Gateway Pundit, recalling his arrest when he was with his wife in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, on Feb. 2, 2021.
Some 30 agents “assaulted him with flashbang grenades, armored vehicles, and more than 10 assault rifles aimed at his chest,” the Gateway Pundit indicated.
“At no point did either my wife or I resist but we were both roughly handled and forced/dragged up the stairs after being shackled and handcuffed as we were shoved around,” Schwartz said.
The Gateway Pundit reported:
Last year, the DC jury found Pete and his co-defendants guilty on every single charge. There were no victims to Pete’s alleged crimes. The prosecution presented no witnesses.
Pete Schwartz called The Gateway Pundit after he was found guilty on every single count. There were 11 counts against Pete and the two co-defendants that he had never seen in his life and never met before their trial together. The jury did not even read over the evidence before they voted to sentence the three Trump supporters.
Pete was found guilty of obstruction of an official proceeding despite the fact that he NEVER entered the US Capitol
Pete Schwartz told The Gateway Pundit that Juror #8 flipped him off as they read the guilty verdict against him, where he was found guilty on every single count.
The news outlet transcribed its phone interview with Schwartz, who recounted the specifics of his situation.
Yesterday, I went for sentencing, and I was given the longest sentence of any Jan. 6er to date, and this is traumatic. I read an article in the Huffington Post today where if you read the article, you can see that it’s saying that I sprayed mace. I didn’t hit anybody, and I was accused of throwing a chair that also hit the ground safely, they said. And I never went inside the Capitol building. But they gave me 14 years and two months. Oh, my God. They’re basing that off of what they say is they’re saying I have a horrible criminal record, which they don’t mention because they’re talking about stuff from 30 to 35 years ago, which is predominantly traffic offenses.
A few little incidents along the way where I’ve just pled out to some things, but 90 plus percent of it is traffic offenses, and they don’t mention that. And I wish I would encourage anybody listening that look up my record. It’s not criminal stuff. This was part of when I finally got my discovery after being locked up for a year and a half. Most of it was saying past offenses, and they were talking about where I lived when I was born in 1973. It was an intimidation move, and that’s all this amounts to. It has nothing to do with me doing anything wrong.
And I can’t believe 14 years and two months, and the guy in the cell next to me has seven years for murder. And there’s absolutely no harm to anybody from anything I’ve done.
The Gateway Pundit noted Schwartz broke into tears when he made a “heartbreaking” call to his parents who are in their seventies, knowing he may not see them again as a free man.
“And the hardest part to this for me is that about ten years ago, my parents, a lot of people in my age group, their parents passed. And it’s tragic, and everybody always said the same thing. They would always say that they wish they would have spent more time with them,” he explained.
“So I dedicated for the last ten years, I dedicated at least one day per week to spend with my parents and got to know them. It’s the best decision I’ve ever made. And telling them about this sentence they’re elderly. It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. It doesn’t affect just me … It’s hard on all of us. It’s not just me that’s suffering from this.”
Jim Host of the Gateway Pundit asked Schwartz: “Pete, you also had told me before that on Jan. 6, you were standing outside of the Capitol, and they started firing the police started firing tear gas and the rubber bullets on the crowd, and you got caught in a space where you felt that it was unsafe. And weren’t you with your girlfriend at the time and you were worried about her safety?”
Schwartz responded:
“Yes, absolutely. She was my wife at the time. And we had walked up because we went there to watch a Trump speech, and the speech ended at 1:15 … So when we walked up there, we had no idea what was going on. We didn’t know there was any reason to protest, because we didn’t know Mike Pence had made that decision. And from where we were standing, we didn’t see any police. We never saw any trespassing signs. We didn’t talk to any police.
“We could tell there was a commotion going on up in front of us, but we weren’t close enough to see what was happening. But then the cops started shooting over the crowd and hitting us, and then they shot gas behind us. And when they opened up the police line, everybody was trying to get away from the gas, and they funneled us in another area. … I never entered the Capitol building, and that was my main charge. That’s what the majority of the time came from, because they said that I disrupted Congress. But Congress was already in recess before I ever came on the grounds, and I never entered the building. So it’s impossible to believe that I just run to Congress.”
A GiveSendGo account has been set up to donate to Schwartz’s cause.
TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT CITIZENS JOURNAL Please keep us publishing – DONATE
Not the Peter Schwartz who pepper sprayed and threw a chair at officers?