Nazi sympathizer sentenced to four years in prison for participating in Capitol assault

A U.S. federal judge on Thursday sentenced a Nazi sympathizer to four years in prison for storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, saying his “racist and anti-Semitic motivation” resulted in his participation in the assault.

The defendant, Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, 32, was working as a security guard at a naval station in New Jersey when he joined the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol, ‘The New York Times’ has reported.

In a May trial in Federal District Court in Washington, Hale-Cusanelli was convicted of five criminal charges, including obstructing the certification of the 2020 election results.

The defendant has tried throughout the course of the trial to downplay his role in the assault by claiming to the jury that he had “no idea” that Congress was meeting on Capitol Hill, something the judge called a “lie.”

For their part, prosecutors have argued that Hale-Cusanelli, liked to dress very often as Adolf Hitler, and that he subscribes to the ideologies of white supremacists and Nazi sympathizers, as reported by the newspaper.

“Hale-Cusanelli is, at best, extremely tolerant of violence and death,” prosecutors have described, asserting that the defendant’s actions during the capitol assault were not activism, but “the preamble to his civil war.”

In this regard, in a sentencing memorandum filed last week by the U.S. Government, there is evidence that Hale-Cusanelli told his roommate at the naval station that he had been excited by the assault on the Capitol, comparing it to a “civil war.”

Still, after sentencing, the judge in charge of the case detailed that he believed Hale-Cusanelli’s past actions reflected “a deep hostility and insensitivity” toward ethnic and religious minorities, which, he added, “had significant consequences, including encouraging a recent rise in anti-Semitic attacks across the country.”