WASHINGTON (CN) — During a stipulated bench trial on Friday, a Colorado geophysicist pleaded guilty to three charges related to his actions during the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, where he stole a police baton and pulled police officers into the crowd of rioters.
Jeffrey Sabol, 53, waived his right to both a jury and bench trial, opting instead to agree to a set of facts regarding his actions as outlined by Justice Department prosecutors and admit guilt. He pleaded guilty to three charges: obstruction of an official proceeding, robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.
He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Sabol was part of some of the most violent clashes that day at the Lower West Terrace, where Metropolitan Police officers in riot gear fought off thousands of rioters in a tunnel leading directly into the Capitol building, according to prosecutors’ statement of facts.
The tunnel was the site where MPD Officer Michael Fanone was pulled into the crowd and tased in the back of the neck.
Sabol pulled another officer, referred to only by the initials B.M., into the crowd, grabbing him and dragging him down a set of stairs outside the tunnel and repeatedly punching him while the officer was still on the ground; a crowd of other rioters then beat the officer with flagpoles, crutches, riot shields and stolen police batons.
Among that group were Sabol’s co-defendants Mason Courson, Logan Barnhart, Justin Jersey and five others.
Courson was sentenced to nearly five years in prison at a hearing in June, after the government's sentencing memorandum cited Officer B.M. describing how the assaults left him with bruises “black and blue … consistent with being hit by a metal pipe.”
At Courson's sentencing hearing Assistant U.S. Attorney Benet Kearney said the rioters who pulled officers into the crowd were “throwing [them] to the wolves,” a characterization that applies to Sabol as both the person throwing officers and as one of the wolves himself.
During Friday’s hearing Kearney described how Sabol traveled from Colorado with other members of a neighborhood watch, bringing with him tactical gear, including steel-toed boots and a helmet, as well as radios and zip ties.
She added that based on interviews conducted after the riot, it seemed Sabol “believed fully in the Big Lie, his state of mind on Jan. 6 was that of patriotic rage,” referring to the months-long disinformation campaign by ex-president Donald Trump and his allies that the 2020 election had been stolen — the same efforts that led to two criminal indictments against Trump in Washington and Georgia, in addition to other charges in Florida and New York.
Also on Friday, an unsealed bench warrant for Christopher Worrell, a member of the white nationalist Proud Boys, revealed that he had disappeared earlier this week before a sentencing hearing scheduled for Friday.
Worrell was found guilty of spraying police officers with pepper spray and had been on house arrest awaiting his sentencing, where prosecutors recommended U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth order him to 14 years in prison.
His disappearance comes less than two weeks before leaders of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean and Zachary Rehl are scheduled to be sentenced for their role in inciting much of the violence at the Capitol riot. They were convicted in May of seditious conspiracy, a rare Civil War-era charge that landed Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers, 18 years in prison.
Following the Capitol riot Sabol, who worked as a geophysicist for an environmental services company in Colorado, seemed to quickly grasp the weight of his actions, destroying electronic devices, telling others to do the same and buying a plane ticket to Zurich, Switzerland.
He never boarded, however, over concerns he had been recognized at an airport in Boston, and instead rented a car and drove to New York. He was soon pulled over by police for driving erratically, and officers found Sabol covered in blood with cuts on his arms and thighs, an apparent attempt to take his life.
“I am tired, I am done fighting,” Sabol said, according to the government’s statement of facts.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras, a Barack Obama appointee, scheduled Sabol’s sentencing for Jan. 19, 2024.
In the 31 months since the Capitol Riot, the Justice Department has charged over 1,100 people in connection with their actions on Jan. 6, and sentenced approximately 597 people. The investigation is still ongoing, with approximately 321 people who assaulted officers still unidentified.
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