Gabriel Garcia in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 (via DOJ court filings).
A former Army captain and Proud Boys member from Florida was sentenced to one year behind bars for his role for helping organize the Jan. 6 riot and for storming the U.S. Capitol in 2021.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson also sentenced 43-year-old Gabriel Augustin Garcia to two years probation and ordered him to pay $2,000 in restitution. Garcia was convicted of two felony charges of obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder and obstruction of an official proceeding. The obstruction charge was later dismissed as part of the Supreme Court’s decision in Fischer v. United States.
More from Law&Crime: Capitol rioter who ‘lit the match’ on Jan. 6 gets reduced prison sentence after SCOTUS shoots down widely-used obstruction charge
According to prosecutors, Garcia was a member of the Proud Boys’ “Ministry of Self Defense” that was hand selected by leader Enrique Tarrio, the man currently spending a 22-year-prison sentence for his role in the riot. The group discussed about the potential for violence in a group text. Three days before the assault, Garcia texted “1776 flag flying over the White House last night” and then later added, “time to stack those bodies in front of Capitol Hill.”
Around 1 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021, Garcia received a message from fellow Proud Boys that they were “storming” the Capitol. Garcia went to the Capitol and joined the mob.
As Law&Crime previously reported, prosecutors said Garcia was at “the very front of the crowd” that violently rushed a line of Capitol police on Jan. 6. Once the crowd broke through that line, Garcia recorded himself calling out for then-House Speaker Pelosi.
“Nancy, come out and play,” Garcia said loudly while inside the Rotunda, according to the complaint. Later in the video, he again calls for “Nancy” before turning the camera on himself and saying “Free Enrique,” an apparent reference to Tarrio who had been arrested days earlier for burning a Black Lives Matter flag.
Garcia, a former captain in the U.S. Army and failed 2020 candidate for local office in Florida, uploaded multiple videos to Facebook that day.
Another video is around “five and a half minutes long and depicts an aggressive confrontation with U.S. Capitol Police officers, who are trying to prevent the crowd from advancing,” the complaint says.
“We just went ahead and stormed the Capitol,” Garcia says on the video. “It’s about to get ugly.”
Garcia also yelled at police officers.
“F- you guys, you f-ing traitors,” he said. Garcia then exclaimed: “You ain’t stopping a million. You ain’t gonna hold a million back today”
Cops wound up kicking Garcia out of the building after about an hour. The FBI arrested him on Jan. 19, 2021.
Jackson placed Garcia on house arrest after he attended the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) without the court’s permission.
Marisa Sarnoff contributed to this report.
