WASHINGTON — A Donald Trump supporter who brought two guns to the Capitol on Jan. 6, and dropped one of them on Capitol grounds, was sentenced to five years in federal prison on Friday.
Mark Mazza was sentenced to 60 months behind bars by Judge James E. Boasberg. Before he was sentenced, Mazza told the court he got "caught up in a mob mentality that I never anticipated" and that he was "not quite the monster that the prosecution has described me as."
Federal prosecutors said that Mazza, "while armed with [a] .40 caliber loaded firearm, engaged in multiple efforts to break through the police line: he repeatedly pushed against officers using the combined physical exertion of the mob; he armed himself with a stolen police baton and assaulted officers with the baton; he yelled at officers telling them to get out the mob’s way and to 'Get out of our house!'; he held open the door to the tunnel entrance against the resistance of officers, and after being rebuffed, he gathered additional rioters into the tunnel area to continue 'heave-ho' pushes against officers in the doorway."
The government also said that, after Mazza came out of the tunnel, he was nearby as officers including Mike Fanone were assaulted, but that Mazza "did not assault the officers and video appears to show him trying to protect both officers from other rioters who were assaulting them."
Mazza told the judge he brought the weapons to D.C. because he brings weapons everywhere and had thought he and the person he was traveling with were staying in a dangerous location in the nation's capital. Although Mazza now admits he lost one of his guns at the U.S. Capitol, he filed a false police report claiming it was stolen back in his home state of Indiana.
Mazza said he regretted coming to the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“I wish I could erase it. I wish I could go back and take that hour back" and maybe go to a museum and grab some dinner, he said. He said he felt bad for his children and hoped that his parents won't die before he gets out of federal prison.
“I’m treating this kind of like another military step, like it’s something I’ve got to do,” Mazza, a veteran, said.
Judge Boasberg credited Mazza with helping the officers after participating in the assault but said his conduct was deserving of a significant period of incarceration.
"I don’t know what on earth you were thinking about in that tunnel that day," Boasberg says, calling the videos of his conduct inside the western tunnel "incredibly alarming."
“You weren’t one of the worst, I can see that," Boasberg said. "But the mob doesn’t accomplish what it accomplished that day without numbers."
