Jan. 6 defendant who 'fed' officer to Trump mob sentenced to prison

WASHINGTON — Jack Wade Whitton, a Georgia man who dragged an officer down the steps of the U.S. Capitol while wearing a "Trump 2020" hat on Jan. 6 and bragged he "fed" the officer to the mob, was sentenced to more than four years in prison on Thursday.

"You’re gonna die tonight!" Whitton admitted yelling at officers during one of several assaults he committed on law enforcement at the lower west tunnel, the scene of some of the worst violence during the Capitol attack.

U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras sentenced Whitton to 57 months in prison and ordered mental health treatment. "Those videos were gruesome," Contreras said, referencing videos that showed the assault. "You really went out of control."

Federal prosecutors sought more than eight years in federal prison for Whitton, saying that his brutal assault on one officer “ignited the series of vicious assaults” on officers at the lower west tunnel over a two-minute period.

“Whitton was one of the first assailants to commence what became a prolonged, multi-assailant attack on police officers, and which resulted in injury to those officers," federal prosecutors wrote. "And it was Whitton who first pulled Officer B.M. off of the police line, ‘feeding’ him to the mob, where he was beaten by other rioters. But that attack was not Whitton’s only violence that day. He returned to the Archway 20 minutes after the assault of Officer B.M., where he threatened and kicked officers. He also attempted to climb a wall in order to attack additional police officers. In the days that followed, Whitton expressed pride rather than remorse, and made light of his conduct."

Whitton's defense wrote that he was “not interested in former President Trump or politics” but that he