Jan. 6 rioter in 'Camp Auschwitz' sweatshirt sentenced to prison

WASHINGTON — A Jan. 6 rioter who wore a "Camp Auschwitz" sweatshirt inside the U.S. Capitol was sentenced to 75 days in prison on Thursday, matching what the government had requested.

Robert Keith Packer was arrested the week after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, and pleaded guilty a year later, in January, to a misdemeanor charge of unlawful picketing and parading. The government wanted him to serve 75 days of incarceration as well as three years of probation. Packer's sister had asked for leniency, and urged the court not to “judge a book by [its] cover.” But a federal prosecutor told the judge that the "words on his clothing showed you his intent” on Jan. 6.

“Mr. Packer showed the world who he was on Jan. 6 by both his deeds and his actions," Assistant U.S. Attorney Mona Furst told the court Thursday. "He posted his belief on his clothing that day.”

Nichols said there was clearly an intent to wearing the sweatshirt, but Packer hadn't explained what it was.

“It seems to me that he wore that sweatshirt for a reason. We don’t know what that reason was, because Mr. Packer hasn’t told us,” Nichols said.

Packer admitted that he traveled from Newport News, Virginia, to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 "to attend the rally" held by former President Donald Trump and that he then "entered the building despite seeing broken windows and tear gas deployed by police." He also admitted he was "in a crowd of people in the hallway when rioters took down and broke apart" a sign bearing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's name that was located outside her office.

U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols, a Trump nominee confirmed in 2019, sentenced Packer during a virtual court hearing. Nichols called Packer's sweatshirt “incredibly offensive," but said there was no evidence that Packer used violence against officers. Nichols said while he thought Packer was probably sincere in his regret, his apology was not as full-throated as those of other defendants.

Nichols said Packer was "somewhat above average" in terms of culpability when compared to other defendants who pleaded guilty to the same charge.

Furst said Packer "has not expressed any remorse" for his actions on Jan. 6 or expressed concern for the officers assaulted that day, he's only focused on the impact on his life.

“It’s all about what happened to him.”

Packer's defense attorney, Stephen Brennwald, compared Packer to Forrest Gump, writing that Packer's "demeanor and presence... appeared to be similar to the character played by Tom Hanks in the movie Forrest Gump — a man who went through life almost as if he was outside of his body and mind, looking in." Brennwald said he'd already gotten emails that said his comparison was offensive to Forrest Gump.

Brennwald wrote that Packer had received "quite significant" harassment from the public, "mostly because of the nature of the offensive shirt he was wearing." Packer chose not to make any comments to the judge ahead of his sentencing. Brennwald also said that Packer's own son won't speak to him because of his views, and asked the court to impose a probationary sentence.

In court Thursday, Brennwald wondered if Packer would be treated differently if he had short hair, no beard, and was wearing a Nike shirt instead of a "Camp Auschwitz" sweatshirt. There's "no question" that Packer's sweatshirt is offensive, Brennwald said, but he argued his client shouldn't be punished for the content of his shirt.

Brennwald said he had discussions with Packer about concentration camps, and Packer has acknowledged the existence of such camps, but Brennwald didn't want to elaborate beyond that. Packer doesn't consider himself a white supremacist, and was upset that he was being referred to as such.

“He was very mad when people were calling him a white supremacist,” Brennwald said. “He wanted me to sue Nancy Pelosi when she made some statement on the House floor about him being a white supremacist.”

Kimberly Rice, Packer's sister, wrote a letter in support of her brother, calling him "hands down the BEST BROTHER with a HUGE heart and gentle soul." She said they grew up in a "blue collar, middle class Christian values home," and that they traveled to D.C. together, but wrote that she left early because of the cold weather. She portrayed her brother as a victim of media attention.

"Over the last year and half the media has portrayed and described a person who he is NOT and NEVER has been. His day to day living over the last year and half has been so altered and a major struggle for him, living in fear because of the news media slandering his name and making him out to be some monster that he absolutely is not, losing his long tenure job, death threats to him and and so on," she wrote.

"It’s so easy to judge a book by it’s [sic] cover, without knowing the details of what is truly inside — yet it is also so wrong. All over a sweatshirt — yes a sweatshirt," she wrote, describing a sweatshirt celebrating the location of at least 1.1 million deaths during the Holocaust. "Yes, it could be considered in poor taste just as much as so much more is these days, but it’s not a crime for freedom of expression."

The government’s sentencing memo notes that his sweatshirt bore the word “STAFF” on the back and the phrase “Work Means Freedom” on the front, which “recalls the sign over the entrance to the Auschwitz death camp operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War Two.”

Packer, when asked during a FBI interview after his guilty plea why he had worn the "Camp Auschwitz" sweatshirt, "fatuously replied 'because I was cold'," according to federal prosecutors.

The "Camp Auschwitz" shirt wasn't the only piece of pro-nazi paraphernalia that Packer sported on Jan. 6. Video provided to NBC News this week shows that earlier in the day Packer was wearing a "Schutzstaffel" shirt, referencing Adolph Hitler's paramilitary unit headed by Heinrich Himmler that is more commonly referred to as the "SS." The government presented an image from that video in court on Thursday.

More than 850 people have been arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 attack and more than 350 have been convicted. Sentences have ranged from short periods of probation for misdemeanors to a decade behind bars for a former New York City police officer who assaulted a D.C. police officer on Jan. 6 and then lied on the stand. The FBI has the names of hundreds of additional Jan. 6 participants who could be charged but have not yet been arrested.

Earlier this week, a Trump-appointed judge convicted three rioters of felony charges in connection with the violence in the tunnel on the west side of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, but acquitted two of the defendants on an obstruction of an official proceeding charge that came with significant prison exposure.