William Dunfee appears in photos at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 (U.S. Attorney’s Office).
An Ohio pastor who urged the Jan. 6 mob to “rise up” and insisted “we are not sheeple” will spend years in prison.
William Dunfee, 59, was sentenced on Thursday to 30 months — or 2½ years — in prison, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced in a news release. He was ordered to pay a $10,000 fine and $2,000 restitution. Dunfee was convicted in January of obstruction, civil disorder and trespassing following a bench trial.
According to a statement of facts outlining the case, the series of events leading to the defendant’s participation in the riots that day began on Dec. 27, 2020, when the pastor at New Beginnings Ministry Warsaw in Warsaw, Ohio, took to the ministry’s Facebook page, telling his congregants that “The Government, the tyrants, the socialists, the Marxists, the progressives, the RINOs, they fear you. And they should. Our problem is we haven’t given them reason to fear us.”
Later, he said, “As I said earlier in another previous sermon is this, they used to tell us, you know what, you settle your differences at the ballot. How did that work out for us? It’s not over,” adding, “January 4th through 6th … Are you ready?”
On the Capitol grounds that day, through a bullhorn, he told the mob: “This election has been stolen right out from underneath of our noses and it is time for the American people to rise up. Rise up. Rise up. Today is the day in which it is that these elected officials realize that we are no longer playing games. That we are not sheeple that are just going to be corralled according to their whims and their wills.”
“We will stand up for our country,” he said later, according to court documents. “We are standing up for our freedoms. We are standing up for our president. And today is the day these elected officials, these senators and these congressmen, understand that we are not going to allow this to continue any longer.”
“I am not talking about any of the nonsense of burning buildings and destroying another man’s property, but they [elected officials] need to fear us,” he added, court documents said.
At one point, he said, “We want Donald Trump and if Donald Trump is not coming, we are taking our house. We are taking our house.”
Then he pushed a metal barricade against police twice and went to the front of a crowd of rioters at the Capitol’s East Front entrance, the statement of facts said.
When a rioter leaving the building said, “We did it. We shut ’em all down. We did our job.” Dunfee responded, “Hallelujah,” and told the crowd, “Mission accomplished,” the document said.
The feds said they became aware of “Pastor Bill” just over a month after the attack on the Capitol, when a tipster took screenshots of incriminating comments on a Facebook page, as Law&Crime previously reported.
In the 44 months since Jan. 6, 2021, more than 1,504 people have been charged for crimes related to the Capitol breach, officials said.
Law&Crime’s Matt Naham contributed to this report.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
