Washington After being court-martialed for shooting a restrained Iraqi citizen, the former soldier was sentenced on Monday to more than four years in federal prison for attacking officers during the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
According to video evidence produced by prosecutors, Edward Richmond Jr. yelled, “We’ll break you motherf—er!” as he struck officers with a baton inside the lower west tunnel heading into the Capitol, the scene of some of the greatest violence on January 6, 2021.
This year, Richmond entered a guilty plea to a felony count of assaulting, resisting, or obstructing an officer with a deadly weapon, and was given a 51-month sentence in federal prison.
After internet detectives recognized Richmond as the individual they dubbed Buff Lightyear, who was listed as No. 182 on the FBI’s Capitol Violence website, the agency detained him in January.
Prosecutors stated in their Jan. 6 case that Richmond was dishonorably dismissed from the military after being found guilty of manslaughter in 2004 for “shooting a hand-cuffed Iraqi cow herder in the head” and receiving a three-year military detention sentence.Those information were validated by a number of news accounts at the time. Richmond was among the few defendants on January 6 who were ordered to be detained pending trial due to this and other reasons.
The prosecution claimed that Richmond had “not been deterred by his three-year court-martial” from taking part in the Capitol attack and that he had “also not complied with a crucial restriction of his release” due to his possession of a loaded AR-15 gun at home.
In a sentencing memo, Richmond’s defense attorneys stated that he “realizes the seriousness of his offense” and that he traveled to Washington to provide protection for a demonstration attendee on January 6. “Between the vents of January 6, 2021 and the day of his arrest, Mr. Richmond led a productive life working as a solar panel technician and raising his son Zade by himself,” they stated. “He deserves a downward variant sentence.”
Richmond’s sentencing guidelines, according to the prosecution and defense, were 51 to 63 months in federal prison. The defense team requested a sentence that was below the guidelines, while the prosecution requested the maximum penalty allowed by the guidelines, which was 63 months. At the lower end of the guidelines, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates finally sentenced him to 51 months.
Christopher Maurer, another Jan. 6 rioter, entered a guilty plea this year to assaulting, resisting, or obstructing officers with a lethal or dangerous weapon and was sentenced to 50 months in prison on Monday. Mauer brandished a long metal pipe at officers and yelled, “F— YOU A–HOLES!” He had also been detained in pretrial custody.
In relation to the Capitol attack, more than 1,500 people have been taken into custody, and federal prosecutors have thus far obtained convictions against over 1,100 defendants. Enrique Tarrio, the head of the Proud Boys, was found guilty of seditious conspiracy, and he was among the more than 600 defendants who received sentences ranging from a few days in jail to 22 years in federal prison.
In addition to calling the Jan. 6 defendants “warriors,” “unbelievable heroes,” political prisoners, and hostages,” President-elect Donald Trump declared that he would “certainly” pardon some, if not all, of them. Trump will pardon people “case-by-case” after he regains the White House on January 20, the Trump-Vance transition team told NBC News last week.
CORRECTION (at 12:25 PM ET on November 20, 2024): An earlier version of this article’s headline misidentified Richmond Jr.’s rank. When he was released from the Army, he was a soldier, not an officer.
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