A Minnesota man convicted of assaulting multiple officers during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol called for "accountability" for politicians who spread lies about the 2020 election during his sentencing hearing on Thursday.
Brian Mock was sentenced to 33 months in federal prison, a fraction of the nine years in federal prison that prosecutors had sought. A government sentencing memo noted Mock's repeated assaults on law enforcement and the "multiple false statements" he made at trial. With credit for time he's already served, Mock will end up serving less than two years of additional time behind bars.
Mock, who was a strong supporter of Donald Trump, said during his sentencing hearing that he heard the "same thing over and over again" from Republican politicians who falsely claimed that there was massive election fraud in 2020. Mock noted that none of those prominent politicians who made such claims in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 attack had since come forward to apologize or to claim that they too were duped.
"There should be some accountability for that because I wouldn't have been there otherwise," Mock told Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg on Thursday.
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Boasberg said he agreed that politicians who falsely claimed the election was stolen should be "ashamed of themselves."
Many Jan. 6 defendants have taken the "idiot" defense during their sentencing proceedings, telling judges they believed lies about the election because they were gullible, duped, manipulated, poorly educated or lacked critical thinking skills. Boasberg said he had gotten to know Mock better than any other Jan. 6 defendant who appeared before him and said he believed Mock was intelligent and reflective.
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"You're too smart to have been fooled by the lies on the election," Boasberg said, saying Mock should have been "more perceptive and thoughtful" about the lies he was hearing from politicians who echoed Trump's falsehoods about the election.
Mock represented himself at trial in June, creating an extraordinary moment when he questioned his own son, A.J. Mock — who tipped the FBI off about his father after the attack. Questioning his son on the stand, Mock asked about his son's sexuality, seeking to introduce the fact that he accepted his son after A.J. Mock came out.
“You know I’m proud of you, right?” Brian Mock asked.
“Yes,” A.J. Mock replied.
“And you know I love you, right?” Brian Mock asked.
“Yes,” A.J. Mock replied.
Prosecutors also noted in their sentencing memo that during the trial Mock presented Tommy Tatum, a Jan. 6 participant who frequents the trials of Capitol rioters, as an “independent journalist." When playing Tatum’s videos, prosecutors said Mock “deliberately tried to hide from the Court Tatum’s encouragement of the mob to assault police officers and steal their gear by playing Tatum’s video on mute.” Tatum has not been charged in connection with the Capitol attack.
After the bench trial, Mock was found guilty of four assaults on law enforcement.
In the months after NBC News reported on the "family therapy session" that broke out during his trial, Mock and his son A.J. spoke with The New York Times for a feature story, in which prosecutors say the elder Mock "continued to justify his actions on January 6, refused to accept responsibility, and advanced excuses for his criminal conduct that the Court already rejected."
But Boasberg said he thought the story was "humanizing" and understood why Mock had participated. Mock said during the hearing that he was apprehensive about participating in the piece, but that his son A.J. Mock "wanted" and "needed" that article to happen.
Mock said that he's been in regular contact with the photographer who shot photos for the piece, Erin Schaff, who was assaulted during the Capitol attack. Rioters knocked Schaff down onto the floor, stole one of her cameras and broke the lens on another. Online "sedition hunters" — the citizen sleuths who have aided the FBI in hundreds of Capitol rioter cases — say that they have identified two of Schaff's assailants and sent their information to the FBI but neither has been arrested. The FBI put out a public call for information on one of the assailants last month, even though sleuths say that rioter's name is already in the bureau's possession.
Michelle Peterson, an attorney representing Mock, said in a court filing that Mock "has grown, matured, and become much more self-reflective" since the Capitol attack. In court Thursday, she talked about the ongoing discussions that Mock had with Schaff, saying that hearing about the impact that Jan. 6 had on Schaff had almost been like a form of "restorative justice."
In an interview with NBC News after his sentencing, Brian Mock slightly changed his tune from what he said in court, suggesting he was open to the possibility that evidence about the 2020 election had been “suppressed” by the courts.
Mock said he came to Washington, D.C., after the 2020 election because he was “listening to politicians who were congressmen and senators who had looked at the evidence and supported what was being said. And I have yet to see that evidence.”
“But if it doesn’t exist, then at the very least there needs to be an apology and explanation for that," Mock said.
“When you have officials telling you over and over again — the people we elected — to go ‘No, this isn’t right,’ then I think that’s our duty to question that. And if they were saying we’re going to stand up in Congress and say that something was wrong with this election, ‘we’re going to vote to decertify this,’ those are powerful words," he continued.
“Whatever made them make those statements, I would hope it wasn’t just to get their guy in the White House, I would hope there’s more than that," Mock said. "I would like to see that evidence and I think the rest of the world would too. And if there isn’t, I would like an explanation from those people as to why there wasn’t, because this has ruined a lot of lives.”
Asked about Boasberg's comments that he was too intelligent to have fallen for lies about the election, Mock said that a "full spectrum" of people showed up in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.
"I'm not going to sit here and say that there were all the brightest people that showed up on Jan. 6, there were some flat-out morons that showed up there," Mock said. "But there was some really intelligent, engaged people and I've had deep conversations with some extremely intelligent individuals who looked at that day — Election Day — and thought, 'Something isn't right here.'"
Mock will have to report to prison in about two months to begin serving his term. Nearly 1,300 people have been arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 attack. Prosecutors have secured more than 900 convictions and sentences have ranged from probation for unlawful picketing charges to 22 years in federal prison for seditious conspiracy.
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