Many of the people who showed up in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021 and stormed the Capitol have said they did so because they believed they’d been instructed to do so by failed, one-term, twice-impeached President Donald Trump.
As ABC News reported back in February, the lure for some of the rioters was a bizarre, imagined attachment to Trump:
An ABC News investigation into the nearly 200 accused rioters facing federal charges for their alleged involvement at the Capitol — based on court filings, military records, interviews, and available news reports– found that at least fifteen individuals who stormed the building have since said that they acted based on Trump’s encouragement, including some of those accused of the most violent and serious crimes.
Thomas Sibick also thought he was doing what Trump wanted when he marched on the Capitol and attacked law enforcement officers, but now says he can see he was wrong and the ex-president is a cancer on the country.
In a letter he sent to U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, Sibick writes:
“[The attack was] a disgrace to our nation that left a scar Trump is ultimately responsible for. [Trump] is not a leader and should be ostracized from any political future, what he honestly needs to do is go away! I disagree with what occurred that fateful day, especially the trauma suffered by Officer Michael Fanone, it is without question unconscionable.”
Sibick was released by Judge Jackson until his trial, but under very strict conditions, Ryan Reilly of HuffPost reports:
Overall, Sibick is facing 10 felony counts: Obstruction of an official proceeding, and aiding and abetting; civil disorder; assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers; robbery; entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; impeding ingress and egress in a restricted building or grounds; engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds; impeding passage through the Capitol grounds or buildings; and act of physical violence in the Capitol grounds or buildings.
Those are all serious charges and could wind up sending Sibick to prison for years. But at least he appears to have finally seen the light and can admit that the man he and may others once considered a political savior is instead a malignancy who can never be allowed back in power.
Donald Trump does indeed need to “go away.” To prison. And for a very long time.
