WashingtonAccording to court documents, a military veteran was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday for planning to attack an FBI office and kill law enforcement officials in reprisal for his detention on suspicion of being a member of the mob that swarmed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
One of the first rioters to enter the Capitol was Edward Kelley. Prosecutors claim that Kelley and another man planned to use drones and improvised explosive devices attached to cars to assault the FBI office in Knoxville, Tennessee, almost two years later.
A jury found Kelley guilty in November of soliciting to commit a violent crime, influencing federal authorities by threat, and conspiring to kill federal employees.
President Donald Trump pardoned Kelley for his convictions on January 6, but a judge agreed with prosecutors that Trump’s pardon did not apply to Kelley’s Tennessee case. Following the Republican president’s broad mercy, Kelley, a resident of Maryvale, Tennessee, is now one of the few Capitol riot suspects still behind bars.
According to court documents, Kelley was given a life sentence by U.S. District Judge Thomas Varlan at a hearing in Knoxville. A motion to release Kelley pending the resolution of an appeal was turned down by the judge.
Kelley was given a life sentence by the prosecution, who claimed he lacked regret and was not capable of changing his ways.
“On the contrary, Kelley not only feels that the acts for which he was found guilty were right, but that his duty as a self-proclaimed ‘patriot’ forced him to target East Tennessee law enforcement for assassination,” they wrote.
Kelley spent eight years in the Marine Corps. Prior to being released from the military in 2015, he served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to the FBI, Kelley was caught on camera on January 6, 2021, assisting two other rioters in throwing a Capitol Police officer to the ground and damaging a window with a piece of wood. According to the FBI, he was the fourth individual to enter the Capitol through a broken window.
Last November, a federal judge in Washington found Kelley guilty on 11 counts related to the disturbance following a trial without a jury. Trump pardoned Kelley and hundreds of other guilty Capitol rioters before they could be sentenced.
The judge rejected Kelley’s argument that his pardon was sufficiently wide to encompass his actions in the Tennessee case. According to Varlan, Kelley’s actions on January 6 were years and miles away from his crimes in the Tennessee case. The identical finding was drawn by the prosecutors.
However, Trump’s Justice Department has maintained that the pardons apply to distinct convictions in other Jan. 6 cases. For example, when FBI investigators searched a Kentucky man’s residence for the Jan. 6 inquiry, they found that the man’s conviction for unlawfully carrying firearms was also covered by his pardon for storming the Capitol.
Since December 2022, Kelley has been incarcerated. According to his attorney, Mark Brown, Kelley did not injure anyone or make any overt threats of violence. In order to determine his client’s sentence, Brown urged the judge to deny the prosecution’ plea to apply a terrorism enhancement.
According to Brown, Kelley is not deserving of the same punishment as a real terrorist who killed or maimed hundreds or thousands of Americans.
In January 2024, Austin Carter, Kelley’s co-defendant, entered a guilty plea to a conspiracy charge. On August 4, he is expected to be sentenced.
Prosecutors claim that Kelley gave Carter a list of 36 law enforcement personnel to target for killing, referring to it as their first mission. All of the cops participated in the FBI raid of Kelley’s home after he was arrested in May 2022 on charges of Capitol rioting.
According to the evidence shown in court, Kelley singled out law enforcement because he believed they would play a part in the civil war he intended to start and because he was angry at those involved in his arrest and search of his house in May 2022, the prosecution wrote.
Prosecutors claimed that Kelley, Carter, and a third man discussed plans over an encrypted messaging app. According to Carter’s testimony, in November 2022, he met with Kelley to undergo military-style training.
Prosecutors said that Carter’s testimony was unambiguous: he was certain that the law enforcement officers on Kelley’s list would have been killed if he and Kelley hadn’t been caught.
According to Kelley’s lawyer, there was little to no planning involved in the case.
“No action resulted from discussions,” Brown stated. “Mr. Kelley maintains his claim that he has a First Amendment right to free expression, even though some may not agree with what he said.
