WASHINGTON (CN) — A federal jury returned with a unanimous verdict Monday after a day and a half of deliberations, finding a former police officer guilty of all charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol.
Thomas Robertson of Ferrum, Virginia, joined the mob that overran the halls of America's government after attending demonstrations at the Ellipse on Jan. 6 in support of then-President Donald Trump. The 49-year-old has been incarcerated for most of the last 15 months since he breached the terms of his pretrial release that forbade him from possessing any weapons.
Among the evidence against Robertson is a walking stick he brought to the Capitol. During closing arguments on Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Risa Berkower played video footage of the riot and noted how Robertson picked up his stick during the melee, put it in a defensive posture and stepped forward to confront approaching officers.
When someone with “years of military and police training, including a specialized certification for using a baton,” does that, the prosecutor emphasized, that is when a “stick becomes a weapon — in the hands of a trained professional like this.”
“Just like Mr. Fracker and everyone else around him in that first wave of people to breach the building — the defendant entered the Capitol to overturn the election," Berkower continued.
Robertson's trial in Washington lasted for five days, during which the government elicited witness testimony from Jacob Fracker, a former patrolman in his unit at the Rocky Mount Police Department. The 30-year-old Fracker would have been seated next to Robertson at the defense table this month for his own participation in the Capitol riot, but he took a plea deal in exchange for his charges getting dropped.
Robertson had invited Fracker and one of his neighbors from Virginia to travel to Washington during the week of Jan. 6. “Before he even left this home … he anticipated violence because he packed a gas mask, military food rations and a large wooden stick that he knew how to use as a weapon,” Berkower said.
Showing jurors a Facebook post that Robertson made on December 19, 2021, nearly a month before the riot, the prosecutor told the jury about Robertson's refusal to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election.
”I’ve spent the last 10 years fighting an insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Robertson wrote. “I’m prepared to start one here and know a bunch of like minded and trained individuals.”
It was after that, Berkower said, that Robertson “decided to take matters into his own hands to get what he wanted.”
In hours of witness testimony last week, Fracker recounted how Robertson disposed of their phones and paid him $30,000 in the days after the riot. They had both been placed on leave by the Rocky Mount Police Department as of Jan. 10, and Fracker said Robertson had offered to pay one month of his salary.
It was the defense's position throughout the trial, however, that Robertson did not try to stop both chambers of Congress from certifying the election on Jan. 6. Robertson insists that all he did was enter the Capitol, walk around to find Fracker, then leave.
It was also Robertson's claim that the stick was merely an aid he used for mobility due to injuries sustained while deployed in Iraq for the U.S. military.
Defense attorney Mark Rollins claimed Robertson did not take a defensive posture to confront police; rather his muscle memory kicked in due to the way that the crowd was acting.
During closing arguments, Rollins noted that Robertson and Fracker had also packed their police badges and guns for their trip to Washington but left them in the car before heading to demonstrations.
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