by Madeleine Hubbard
A Tennessee man was sentenced to four years in prison after he entered the U.S. Capitol through a fire door on Jan. 6, 2021, and spent 22 minutes in the building during the riot.
Matthew Bledsoe, 38, was found guilty in July on a felony obstruction charge and four misdemeanor counts. He “scaled a wall … and entered through a fire door at the Senate Wing,” the Justice Department stated Friday.
Bledsoe yelled in the Capitol: “This is our house. We pay for this s***. Where’s those pieces of s*** at?”
After spending about 22 minutes inside the Capitol, Bledsoe left at 2:47 p.m., an hour and a half before Trump told the demonstrators to leave the building.
He returned to outside of the Capitol within two hours as officers secured the grounds, officials said.
Bledsoe posted about the riot on social media in the following days, including a photo on Jan. 7 of lawmakers running for cover with the caption, “How corrupt politicians should feel.”
Bledsoe was investigated by the FBI’s Memphis Field Office and arrested on Jan. 13, 2021. He will have three years of supervised release after his prison sentence and he will be forced to pay $2,000 in restitution and a $2,000 fine.
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Madeleine Hubbard joined Just the News as a fast file reporter after working as an editor at Breitbart News. She previously served as the special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Photo “Capitol Riots” by Tyler Merbler. CC BY 2.0.
