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 readers to “be ready for a lot of big events. Have radios for power loss etc. Love every body.”
During his sentencing, Sparks’ lawyer, Scott T. Wendelsdorf, argued that the focus shouldn’t be on Sparks being the first to enter the building, but rather how long he was inside and what his actions were, The New York Times reported.
Prosecutors asked the judge for a harsher sentence of 57 months in prison and three years of supervised release, stating that his forced entry into the building sparked “the forced interruption of the 2020 Electoral College vote count and threatening the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 presidential election.”
Meanwhile, Wendelsdorf tried to push for a sentence of one year under house arrest followed by three years of supervised release, arguing that Sparks never assaulted or threatened an officer and that he left the Capitol building 20 minutes after he entered.
“Michael Sparks may have started the game, according to the government, but he was out of the game on the sidelines before the first quarter was over,” the defense attorney told jurors in March.
On Tuesday, Judge Timothy J. Kelly told Sparks it was undeniable that his entry into the building would have “an emboldening and encouraging effect on everyone who was at least in your vicinity,” according to The Associated Press.
“To say it wasn’t a material, key point in the mob’s taking of the Capitol, I think, is just ignoring the obvious,” the judge said.
Sparks is one of more than 1,260 people who have been charged for crimes related to the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol.
