January 6 riot “no patriotism,” says decide convicting Georgia man who threatened to kill Pelosi | Nationwide

District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Tuesday sentenced a Georgia man to more than two years in prison for threatening to assassinate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi following the January 6th riot in the U.S. Capitol .

“The heated and inflammatory rhetoric that brought the defendant to the district has not abated. The lie that the election was stolen and illegitimate is still being spread. In fact, it’s getting amplified, not just on social media, but on mainstream news as well. Worse still, it has become heresy for a member of the former President’s Party to say otherwise, ”Jackson said from her Washington, DC courtroom.

“It has to be crystal clear that it is not patriotism, it does not stand up for America and it is not justified to enter the nation’s capital on the orders of a disappointed candidate and threaten members of the other party,” she said before the sentence was passed .

Jackson sentenced Cleveland Grover Meredith Jr., 53, to 28 months in prison followed by three years of parole, and called on him to seek comprehensive mental health care recommended by his defense team. Meredith pleaded guilty to a single count of interstate threats in September.

“I know what I did was wrong. I understand. I take full responsibility, ”Meredith told the judge during Tuesday’s long hearing on the verdict. “I was out of control that day. I apologize to spokeswoman Pelosi if it scared her or if she heard it at all. “

Meredith has been detained in jail since his arrest on Jan. 7 and is counted towards serving time, meaning he will spend less than a year and a half longer in jail. Defense attorney Paul Kiyonaga asked Jackson to sentence Meredith to prison and allow him to return to Georgia and his family, but Jackson remained unmoved.

Jackson reiterated her belief that Meredith was a symptom of a bigger problem.

“I have to think about the other purposes of a punishment,” she said.

These other factors include preventing others from committing the same crime, she said.

“The level of discourse in this country is so degraded and degraded that even public officials – people who are supposed to be our leaders – don’t think about taking someone’s head if they don’t agree,” she said. “And the threats against members of Congress, the Cabinet, the judiciary, the press – all the people who do their jobs – multiply every day. But I would postulate that the boundaries of propriety and laws have not changed a bit and that they have to be enforced. “

Meredith is among a small minority of the more than 675 accused sentenced to prison terms in connection with the January 6th riot, but he is unique in that he missed the riot entirely.

Meredith traveled from Denver to attend the January 6 Trump rally but was delayed by car problems and arrived later that night after the violence. He was arrested in his Washington, DC hotel room the next day after his mother called the FBI concerned about text messages he sent to an uncle threatening to murder Pelosi.

“See if she could go over to Pelosi’s (expletive) speech and put a bullet in the head on live television,” Meredith wrote. He threatened Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser similarly.

They were among many of the violent and profane text messages he sent in the days before and in the hours after the Capitol rising. On the way to Washington, Meredith was delighted with the violence in the Capitol and told a friend that he was “3.5 hours away from shooting practice.”

“I’m going to collect a (expletive) ton of traitors (sic) heads,” he wrote. “I predict that many will die in our country in the next 12 days.”

The FBI found the news on his cell phone, and when they searched a tag he was wearing behind his car, they found an assault rifle, a semi-automatic handgun, and over 2,500 rounds of ammunition, including armor-piercing cartridges.

“He expected there would be trouble,” said US Assistant Attorney Anthony Franks. “He could have made these threats if his mother and others hadn’t alerted the FBI.”

Kiyonaga described the text messages as “a lot of talk” from a man with a history of mental illness.

“That was not an indication of a serious threat,” he said. “Sir. Meredith is many things, and I’ll tell you one thing, he talks a lot.”

Kiyonaga pointed to self-deprecating messages sent by Meredith stating that he was “joking” about leaving town the next day.

However, prosecutors indicated that Meredith’s threats came after he took the step of driving across the country with a trailer full of guns and ammunition.

Meredith has no criminal record, but he has a history of violent and unpredictable behavior, behavior that, according to court records, worsened when Meredith became intrigued by the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Meredith graduated from the prestigious Lovett School in Atlanta and graduated from Sewanee: The University of the South in 1990 with a degree in economics. He owned and operated the CarNutz car wash at US 41 in Acworth, but made headlines in 2018 when he got close to the company that sponsors QAnon. In 2019, Lovett banned Meredith from campus for alleged “threats of violence”.

A brief filed by the prosecutor outlines Meredith’s checkered past, including a violent assault in which he allegedly pushed his father’s head through a window, a 2005 criminal arrest of assault that was not prosecuted, and several road traffic incidents.

In 2018 Meredith is said to have pointed a gun at another driver and his daughter. According to the court brief, Meredith admitted aiming the gun but, for some reason, was not charged. The court records indicate that the traffic incident occurred in Georgia, but it does not state where.

In another incident, Meredith reportedly fired a gun “in a busy business district,” but again he was not charged, prosecutors wrote. And on Jan 7, amid the spate of text messaging threats, Meredith got into an argument with a DC driver, bumped him in the head, and hit him while he was on the ground.

Details of these alleged events are and are likely to be contained in sealed court records. Jackson agreed to keep certain details about Meredith’s intellectual history under seal in order to protect his privacy.

Available court records indicate that Meredith has a history of mental health problems, some of which can be traced back to trauma as a child and later to his sister’s death from a brain tumor. Documents state that he has repeatedly turned down therapy, including failure to follow a treatment plan suggested by family members shortly before his arrest.

Friends and family members, including both of Meredith’s parents, apologized, but Jackson noted that the man’s problems had been known for years and there is no belief that this time he would get help outside of the structured environment of the prison.

“It was a long time coming,” said the judge, adding that she intended to remain involved in the case.

In tears, Meredith said he just wanted to be back with his family and take care of his two children.

“I don’t want to have anything to do with politics anymore,” he said.

———

© 2021 The Atlanta Journal Constitution. Visit ajc.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.