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The Florida man who pranced around with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s podium during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was sentenced to more than two months in prison Friday.
Adam Johnson — who once boasted that a photo of his shenanigan “broke the Internet” — was sentenced to 75 days behind bars by a federal judge in Washington, DC, for one count of entering and remaining in a restricted building or ground.
Johnson pleaded guilty in November and will also have to complete 200 hours of community service as part of the sentence.
He was part of a pro-Donald Trump mob who roamed the Capitol building that day and encouraged his fellow rioters to break down an entrance onto the House floor by using a bust of George Washington, prosecutors said in a sentencing memorandum filed in his case.
He yelled to rioters that the bust of Washington would make a “great battering ram” as they tried to breach the doorway, according to the court filing.
But Johnson is most recognized for posing for photos with Pelosi’s podium, which he swiped during the siege and carried into the rotunda of the Capitol.
After a photo that showed him gleefully smiling while carrying the podium went viral on the Web, Johnson boasted to friends in text messages that he “broke the Internet” and that he was “finally famous.”
At his sentencing Friday, Johnson claimed that he does not hate Pelosi and said posing for the photos with the podium was “stupid.”
“I bear no ill will toward her or her office at all,” Johnson said, according to The Associated Press.
Johnson turned himself in two days after the riot and cooperated with prosecutors after his arrest.
His lawyers wrote in a court filing before sentencing that he was being punished in part because of the viral photo that showed him with Pelosi’s lectern.
“Arguably, if he latched onto some other piece of government furniture for his photo opportunity, jail time would not even be a consideration,” they wrote.
With Post Wires
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