Jan. 6 Rioter Who First Breached The Capitol Building Gets More Than 4 Years In Prison

A man who prosecutors say was the first to breach the Capitol building during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot was sentenced on Tuesday to more than four years in prison.

Michael Sparks, 47, of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, was sentenced to 53 months in prison, 36 months of supervised release, and charged a $2,000 fine, after being found guilty of obstruction of an official proceeding, civil disorder and several misdemeanor offenses earlier this year, according to the Department of Justice .

Sparks had traveled to Washington with a group of co-workers and attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6. According to evidence presented at his trial, he was one of the first rioters to break into the Capitol building, and video footage shows him climbing inside the building through a broken window, despite warning from others not to.

He proceeded to join a group of men in pursuing a U.S. Capitol police officer up a flight of stairs while the mob shouted at the officer, the evidence showed. Several other officers joined in to try to stop the rioters and ordered them to leave, after which Sparks walked to the front of the group and confronted the first officer, aggressively yelling, “This is our America!”

In the days prior to the Jan. 6 riot, Sparks had expressed violent intentions online, writing, “We want a civil war to be clear” on the social media site Parler, according to evidence presented during his trial. He had also posted to Facebook: “It’s time to drag them out of Congress. It’s tyranny.”

According to court documents, Sparks had prior knowledge of Congress’ plans to certify the electoral votes. Following the Jan. 6 riot, he wrote in a Parler post, “A new dawn is coming. Be ready. Just pray and trust in the Lord,” warning