While starving St. Augustine Record readers for news, GANNETT's still investing in some solid coverage in our neighbor to the north, the Jacksonville Florida Times-Union.
Case in point: longtime reporter Steve Patterson's coverage of insurrectionists charged with federal crimes in Donald Trump's 1/6 terrorist coup attack on our United States Capitol:
From Florida Times-Union:
Seeking jail time, prosecutor details First Coast man's role in U.S. Capitol riot
A federal prosecutor wants a Northeast Florida man to spend five months in jail for taking part in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, calling his actions unusually serious.
“Indeed, it is among the most aggravated misdemeanor cases to reach sentencing in these Capitol breach prosecutions,” Assistant U.S. Attorney William Dreher wrote in a sentencing memo filed Tuesday in federal court in Washington.
Jeffrey Register is scheduled for sentencing Jan. 18 on a single misdemeanor – parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building – that he pleaded guiltyto in October.
His attorney, a public defender, is also expected to file a sentencing memo but hadn’t done so last week.
Register, who is described in different court records as living in both Jacksonville and Fernandina Beach, legally could be sentenced to anything from no time to six months behind bars. The prosecutor’s memo tried to build a case for the long end of the spectrum.
While dozens of others have been sentenced already, Dreher's memo to U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly argued the 39-year-old had an outsized impact, steering people to the entrance to the Speaker’s Lobby in the House of Representatives minutes before rioter Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed there by police.
Babbitt was one of five people, including a police officer, who died during or soon after the riot. Although Babbitt reached the Speaker's Lobby entrance before Register, the prosecutorr said Register’s conduct “arguably contributed to the circumstances leading to the fatal clash.”
Dreher said the First Coast man walked into the Capitol within minutes of the first rioters’ entrance and went with others to the House chamber’s main entrance, hoping to affect the meeting inside where Congress was certifying President Joe Biden’s election.
The entrance was barricaded, Dreher said, so Register hunted around, found the more vulnerable Speaker’s Lobby entrance and “frantically encouraged the crowd of rioters to follow him.”
The memo includes a time-lapse of security camera images near the Speaker’s Lobby entrance, seeming to show Register (wearing a distinctive hoodie) and another man waving at a crowd to join them, then the crowd heading through the hallway with Register walking alongside.
Register left the Capitol after Babbitt was shot, the memo said.
Quoting records of an FBI interview, the prosecutor said Register reported later that he “wished that they were actually able to make it into the House chamber during the certifying process to show their support for President Trump.”
The prosecutor said other factors, including Register initially denying to the FBI that he had entered the Capitol and his admission that he had deleted cell phone photos from inside the Capitol and reset his phone to purge evidence from the riot, also supported a stern sentence.
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