Brian Mock, a Minnesota man convicted of assaulting police officers during the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, was sentenced to 33 months in prison.
At his sentencing hearing, Mock said he heard “lies” from Republican politicians claiming the 2020 election was stolen, fueling his actions.
He asserted that he was “listening to politicians who were congressmen and senators who had looked at the evidence and supported what was being said. And I have yet to see that evidence.”
“But if it doesn’t exist, then at the very least there needs to be an apology and explanation for that,” he said.
He said those politicians should be held “accountable” for spreading misinformation.
The judge agreed politicians who spread election lies should be “ashamed.”
“When you have officials telling you over and over again — the people we elected — to go ‘No, this isn’t right,’ then I think that’s our duty to question that. And if they were saying we’re going to stand up in Congress and say that something was wrong with this election, ‘we’re going to vote to decertify this,’ those are powerful words,” Mock added.
“Whatever made them make those statements, I would hope it wasn’t just to get their guy in the White House, I would hope there’s more than that,” Mock said. “I would like to see that evidence and I think the rest of the world would too. And if there isn’t, I would like an explanation from those people as to why there wasn’t, because this has ruined a lot of lives.”
“I’m not going to sit here and say that there were all the brightest people that showed up on Jan. 6, there were some flat-out morons that showed up there,” Mock said. “But there was some really intelligent, engaged people and I’ve had deep conversations with some extremely intelligent individuals who looked at that day — Election Day — and thought, ‘Something isn’t right here.'”
Mock also questioned his son, who tipped off the FBI about his father’s involvement.
While Mock expressed some regret, he also suggested after sentencing that evidence of election fraud may have been “suppressed,” and politicians should explain why such evidence doesn’t exist.
Nearly 1300 people have been arrested for their roles in the Jan. 6 attack, and prosecutors have secured over 900 convictions with sentences ranging from probation to over 20 years in prison.