WASHINGTON — A military veteran from Georgia who attacked police officers at the U.S. Capitol as part of a pro-Trump mob trying to overturn the 2020 election results was sentenced to more than two years in federal prison Monday.
Kevin Creek, 47, a former Marine, was sentenced to 27 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich for assaulting officers on Jan. 6.
Creek was arrested in June and pleaded guilty in December, when he admitted to striking a Washington police officer in the hand, pushing a Capitol Police officer and kicking the same officer.
At his sentencing, Creek apologized to the officers and to his family.
"I take full responsibility," Creek said. "I went to D.C. with just the intention of going to the rally with some friends. ... It was very impulsive ... what I did, and it was very bad judgment."
"I know that I have to be punished for this," Creek said. "I'm truly sorry."
Friedrich said she believed Creek's apology was "genuine and heartfelt." But she said he still committed a "serious felony offense" by participating in the "unprecedented attack" on the Capitol.
Prosecutors said in a court filing last week that Creek took a "first aid kit, mace, a boot knife, and binoculars" to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, and Friedrich said Monday that Creek decided to go "toe to toe" with the officers at the Capitol.
"He came to D.C. prepared for violence," she said. "He made a deliberate choice to join this large, out-of-control crowd at the Capitol." Creek, Friedrich said, was "determined" to get to the front line even though his friends stayed behind.
The Washington officer who was assaulted wrote in a victim impact statement that he spent 30 minutes trying to control the mob before he was assaulted by Creek and that police “would have stood a better chance” of defending the Capitol had Creek and other rioters not helped break the line.
Friedrich said Creek, who was wearing a camouflage Marines Corps hat on Jan. 6, took actions that were "completely inconsistent with the values that he held as a former Marine officer of the United States."
Creek served from 1995 to 1999 on active duty and was honorably discharged in August 1999 as a corporal, his attorneys said.
Nearly 800 defendants have been charged in connection with the Capitol attack, and more than 250 defendants have pleaded guilty. As NBC News has reported, the FBI has the names of hundreds of riot suspects who haven't yet been arrested. The Justice Department is seeking millions of dollars in additional resources to prosecute hundreds of Capitol riot cases.
Creek was sentenced the same day a jury returned a guilty verdict in the case against Thomas Webster, a former New York City police officer who attacked a Washington officer at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Webster was both the fourth Jan. 6 defendant to face a jury and the fourth to be found guilty by a jury.
