- A jury found former police officer Thomas Robertson guilty on all six charges he faced.
- The trial featured testimony from a former police colleague whose nickname for Robertson was "dad."
- Robertson is the third January 6 defendant found guilty at trial.
A jury found former police officer Thomas Robertson guilty Friday on charges connected to the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, handing down a conviction after just hours of deliberations in one of the first court trials linked to the insurrection.
After deliberating Friday afternoon and through Monday, the jury convicted Robertson on all six charges he faced, including obstruction of an official proceeding and trespassing on restricted Capitol grounds with a dangerous weapon.
The FBI arrested Robertson a week after the January 6 attack in southwest Virginia on charges that he unlawfully trespassed on Capitol grounds as Congress prepared to certify Joe Biden's electoral victory. During the weeklong trial, federal prosecutors displayed images and video — including police bodycam footage — showing Robertson outside the Capitol with a wooden stick, and later, entering the building with a fellow police officer.
"This defendant gleefully put himself in the thick of the initial crowd of rioters who set off hours of chaos in the Capitol," said prosecutor Risa Berkower, in a closing argument earlier on Friday.
"He was proud about what he did, about what the mob did," she added.
In his own closing argument, defense lawyer Mark Rollins conceded that the Robertson was guilty of some of the less serious charges he faced — including trespassing on restricted Capitol grounds — but disputed that the wooden stick amounted to a dangerous weapon. Prosecutors said Robertson used the stick as a baton to block police officers rushing to respond to the violence at the Capitol, but the defense team argued that the combat-wounded Army veteran was instead using it as a walking stick on January 6.
And so the trial turned, in large part, on the jurors' views of Robertson's physical abilities. Prosecutors noted that, when FBI agents found the stick in the trunk of Robertson's car, he referred to it as a flag pole rather than a walking stick.
In their questioning of the former Rocky Mount, Virginia, town manager, prosecutors also underscored the fitness requirements for police officers. But the now-retired town manager, James Ervin, conceded under cross-examination that "if you were to gaze upon" the Rocky Mount, Virginia, police force, "you would find many that could use some weight reduction."
Prosecutors also highlighted a message, sent in April 2021, in which Robertson boasted about being able, at age 48, of running a "16 minute 2 mile with a 30lb pack."
"I am as dangerous as I'll ever be," he wrote, according to the message prosecutors showed.
Prosecutors emphasized that Robertson clutched the stick in the so-called Port arms position—a defensive stance from which he could still inflict harm. A police officer testified that he viewed the stick as a potential threat, saying it could be used to "hit you upside the head and knock you unconscious."
But Rollins attributed Robertson's grip of the stick to "muscle memory" from his military career.
Rollins also urged jurors to acquit on the charge of obstruction of an official proceeding, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, drawing a contrast between Robertson's minutes-long stay inside the Capitol and the conduct of rioters who violently pressed toward the House floor.
Prosecutors, Rollins said, had imputed that conduct onto Robertson, almost as though there was "osmosis" between him and rioters he described as "knuckleheads."
"These clowns are still trying to come in," Rollins said, as he displayed video footage of rioters pushing against police.
By then, he told jurors, "Mr. Robertson is long gone."
'I absolutely hate this'
The verdict came just days after a federal judge dealt the Justice Department its first trial setback in the more than 770 prosecutions stemming from January 6.
On Wednesday, Judge Trevor McFadden found New Mexico engineer Matthew Martin not guilty on a pair of misdemeanor charges, in the first outright acquittal of a January 6 defendant.
McFadden, a Trump appointee confirmed in 2017, found Martin's claim that police allowed him inside the Capitol to be "plausible" and said prosecutors failed to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.
In a previous bench trial — where a judge, rather than a jury, reviews evidence and hands down a verdict — McFadden found Cowboys for Trump leader Couy Griffin guilty of trespassing on Capitol grounds but acquitted him on a separate misdemeanor charge.
Before that verdict, a jury convicted Guy Reffitt, a member of the far-right Three Percenters militia, in the first trial arising from the Justice Department's investigation of the January 6 attack.
Reffitt's trial featured testimony from his teenage son, underscoring how the January 6 attack has divided families and friends. The proceedings against Robertson similarly showcased that legacy of January 6.
On Wednesday, a former colleague of Robertson's recalled accompanying him on January 6 and advancing on the Capitol after attending a pro-Trump rally earlier that day. The former officer, Jacob Fracker, was arrested the same day as Robertson on charges linked to January 6, and both were later fired by the Rocky Mount, Virginia, police department.
In emotional testimony, Fracker described Robertson as both his sergeant and mentor. He testified that the two referred to each other by nicknames — "dad" and "son."
"I absolutely hate this," Fracker said on the witness stand Wednesday.
"I've always been on the other side of things … the good guy side, so to speak," he added.
Fracker testified as part of a plea deal after admitting, weeks before Robertson's trial, to a charge he conspired to obstruct the joint session of Congress on January 6.
More than a year removed from the day's violence, Fracker said he was ashamed of his involvement in the January 6 attack. But he recalled feeling full of "adrenaline" on January 6.
"I felt like we had maybe been heard by whoever it was we needed to be heard by … maybe have the election results overturned," Fracker testified.
Inside the Capitol on January 6, Fracker flashed the middle finger as he posed with Robertson for a selfie. After returning to Rocky Mount, Virginia, Fracker said he gave his cellphone to Robertson.
At trial, prosecutors showed text messages in which Robertson said their phones "took a lake swim" and that "anything that may have been problematic is destroyed."
Prosecutors highlighted other messages and social media posts in which Robertson bragged about his involvement in January 6 and used incendiary rhetoric. In one message before January 6, he wrote, "A legitimate republic stands on four boxes: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and then the cartridge box."
On Friday, Berkower punctuated her closing argument with an apparent allusion to that message.
"In this country, no one is above the law," she said.
"In our democracy, we don't decide elections with a cartridge box."