A Mountain View resident facing criminal charges for entering the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has decided to plead guilty.
Shawn Bradley Witzemann was arrested in April 2021 and charged with knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds as well as disorderly and disruptive conduct.
A plea hearing is scheduled to take place this week.
Witzemann
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“There is no guarantee but the government offered to drop three of the charges and then I plead guilty to a class B misdemeanor of picketing and parading in the Capitol building,” Witzemann said.
The charge carries the potential for six months in federal prison and a $500 fine for restitution.
“I don’t believe that will be the case,” Witzemann told the St. Louis Record “We have a strong argument in my particular case for time served. I lost the business that initially funded everything I did in journalism when I started out. I lost my house. I was taken to a federal immigration facility in New Mexico for 24 hours and it was two hours away from my family.”
As previously reported in the St. Louis Record, Witzemann followed a crowd of protestors into the U.S. Capitol at the rally that was staged in support of former President Trump. A week after the Jan. 6 rally, he was interviewed by the FBI and subsequently charged.
“We negotiated and we went through the process and I'm very happy with my legal representation,” he said. “The case has come to a certain point where I would rather just move on in a lot of ways. It’s a knock on the chin a little bit but I'm not at all ashamed of my actions that day. Everything was from the heart and from a desire to de-escalate the entire situation.”
Witzeman’s attorney is Guy Womack of Houston, Texas.
Charging documents obtained by the St. Louis Record state that Witzemann was present inside the U.S. Capitol building "during the riot and related offenses" and that he participated in the obstruction of the Congressional proceedings.
“The U.S. Attorney’s office has said repeatedly that I'm not a high priority for them as far as seeking any sort of major punishment,” Witzeman said. “They have said that they don't want any sort of jail time or anything like that. I've sat down face to face with the U.S. Attorney who's been prosecuting my case and I have no reason to think he's malicious towards me.”
The ultimate arbiter of Witzemann’s charges, however, is Senior Judge Thomas F. Hogan of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia.
“We'll present our plea that we worked on with the U.S. Attorney to the judge on Zoom and then the judge decides whether or not he's going to accept it or reject it,” he added.