Missouri man sentenced in Capitol riot case said Trump, others to blame for his actions

An Independence man sentenced Friday for breaching the Capitol on Jan. 6 blamed Trump, right-wing media and other elected officials — including Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley — for spreading the “Big Lie” that led to his actions.

In a court document filed prior to the sentencing, defense attorney Ronna Holloman-Hughes said Devin Kiel Rossman was duped by Trump and others into believing that Democrats rigged the 2020 presidential election.

“Before January 6, 2021, Mr. Rossman held a good faith belief the 2000 presidential election was in the process of being stolen by Joe Biden Democrat operatives,” Holloman-Hughes wrote in Rossman’s sentencing memorandum. “Then President Trump trumpeted this claim to the nation repeatedly and loudly from the time of the 2020 election to January 6, 2021, and continues to press that claim today.”

Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell sentenced Rossman to 36 months’ probation with a condition of intermittent incarceration and a $2,000 fine. He also must pay $500 restitution for damage to the Capitol building and costs borne by the U.S. Capitol Police, which prosecutors say totaled nearly $2.9 million.

Rossman, 38, pleaded guilty in September to parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, a misdemeanor. He faced a maximum penalty of six months’ imprisonment, a $5,000 fine and five years’ probation.

‘Susceptibility to delusional thinking’

The sentencing hearing was held in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The government had requested a sentence of 90 days’ incarceration, 36 months of probation, 60 hours of community service and $500 restitution.

In its sentencing memorandum filed last month, the government said Rossman should receive jail time because he entered the Capitol building just minutes after the initial breach and remained inside for about an hour and 53 minutes. While inside, the document said, he roamed the building and eventually reached the Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office suite, a restricted area.

Rossman then “entered the Speaker’s Office suite and tried to open doors while the Speaker’s terrified staffers sought shelter under their desks” and took photos and bragged to friends in Facebook messages about entering the area. He also has expressed little remorse for his actions, the document said.

But Holloman-Hughes, of the federal public defender’s office in Kansas City, laid the blame at Trump’s feet. She painted Rossman as a victim of Trump’s schemes even before the election, when she said the former president began using social media to spread false claims of fraud and said the only way he could lose was if the process was rigged.

The document cited a variety of sources saying that Trump disseminated more than 400 false claims of rigged or stolen elections to his supporters via Twitter after the 2020 election. It added that at his Jan. 6 rally, Trump directed supporters to the Capitol after he and other speakers again claimed the election had been stolen and said Vice President Mike Pence and others needed to do something about it.

The “Big Lie” was amplified in the months leading up to Jan. 6, the document said, through right-wing news outlets like One America News Network, Newsmax and Right Side Broadcasting. It went on to say that “Trump’s false claims were bolstered by our very own elected officials — local, state, and national, including Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri, who infamously raised a clinched fist in faux solidarity with persons gathered outside the Capitol before its breach.”

Holloman-Hughes said the judge should take those issues into consideration when sentencing Rossman.

“A defendant’s susceptibility to delusional thinking mitigates the severity of the offense and justifies leniency,” she wrote. Though his beliefs were “cult-like” and “ill informed,” she said, Rossman’s underlying motivation was “to preserve the integrity of the 2020 presidential election.”

“From this factually flawed perspective, Mr. Rossman’s willingness to follow Trump’s explicit directive on January 6 to march on the Capitol is comparable to a misguided act of civil disobedience.”

Congressional staffers feared for their lives

Rossman traveled by bus from Missouri to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5, 2021, to protest Congress’ certification of the Electoral College. Prior to the trip, the government’s sentencing memorandum said, he discussed plans with others on Facebook “to bring firearms and knives to Washington, D.C.”

“In one conversation, Rossman sent a picture of three knives and stated on January 5, 2021 that he intended to conceal the knives, “one for my boot, one for my waist and one for my pocket.” He also texted pictures of firearms that he intended to bring to Washington, D.C.”

Rossman later told authorities he ultimately decided against taking these items to D.C.

When Rossman and other rioters began occupying the Speaker’s office suite on Jan. 6, the government’s memorandum said, Congressional staffers barricaded themselves in a nearby conference room. They huddled in the dark, it said, fearing for their lives as they heard protesters screaming for their boss.

A video taken by another protester shows Rossman entering a conference room in the Speaker’s office suite where a laptop was open, the document said.

“Protestors around Rossman can be heard on the video chanting, ‘Nancy, where are you?’, ‘We’ve got something to say,’ ‘Here’s Johnny,’’Where are you?’, ‘Who’s going to hack it?’ in reference to the open laptop, ‘they ran out of here’ in reference to the office occupants, and ‘You scared little democrat …”’ among other things. Glass can be heard shattering while Rossman is still in the conference room. Rossman can be seen in the video with his camera phone out, taking pictures.”

Prosecutors said Rossman did not seem to grasp that there were terrified staffers hiding from the mob: “Instead, he bragged to his friends in private messages that he had made it that far into the interior of the building.” He also took several photos to prove that he’d been inside the building and sent them to people on Facebook.

Defendant wanted government to pay travel expenses

Rossman is the 14th Missouri resident to be sentenced in connection with the Capitol riot. Two others have pleaded guilty and await sentencing, and two are scheduled for trial early next year. The cases of five other Missourians charged in the Capitol riot are winding their way through court.

In September, Rossman filed a motion asking the judge to conduct his sentencing via video conference instead of in person. That practice was allowed regularly during the COVID-19 epidemic but has been discontinued for felony cases and is up to the judge when it comes to misdemeanor cases.

If Howell denied Rossman’s request and required him to attend his sentencing in person, his motion said, he wanted the court to order the U.S. Marshals Service to pay his travel expenses.

His reasoning: “Mr. Rossman lives in Independence, Missouri, approximately 1,050 miles away from the District of Columbia. Mr. Rossman has been deemed indigent by this court. He earns $25.00 per hour. His rent is $1260.00 per month. He owns an automobile but the drive would be 20 hours each way. In December that could take several days and be dangerous depending on the weather. Further, Mr. Rossman would lose his job if he is away for more than a few days.”

Howell would have none of it.

Such permission was unwarranted, she wrote, “given the seriousness of the underlying offense conduct, in which defendant traveled to this district and participated in breaching the secure perimeter of and entering the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021…”

Rossman needed to be present when his sentence was imposed, Howell wrote, “to both reflect the seriousness of the offense and promote respect for the law.”

Regarding his request for travel expenses, Howell said, “Defendant was able to travel to Washington, D.C., to engage in the very offense conduct that is the subject of these proceedings.

“The interests of justice would not be served by the U.S. Government paying for defendant to make that same trip now that he is to be sentenced for that offense conduct.”