Capitol riot 3 years later: FBI has arrested 25 South Carolinians; 19 found guilty

Three years after a mob breached the U.S. Capitol, forcing Congress to flee and stopping the certification of electoral votes for now-President Joe Biden, 25 people from South Carolina have been arrested by the FBI for offenses related to the riot, according to a tally by The State newspaper.

The 25 South Carolinians are among the more than 1,235 people from across the country charged with offenses from Jan. 6, 2021, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The FBI investigation is ongoing, both nationwide and in South Carolina, and more people could be arrested, officials say.

Eighteen of the South Carolinians charged have pleaded guilty to crimes ranging from violent assaults on law officers to what amounts to trespassing inside the Capitol, which was closed to the public that day.

Offenders who participated in destructive behavior against people or property got more severe sentences. Sentences have ranged from 44 months for attacking police to probation or home detention.

Only one South Carolina defendant so far, Derek Gunby, 43, of Anderson County, opted for a jury trial. In November, a federal jury in Washington, D.C., found him guilty of a variety of charges, including disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building. No date has been set for Gunby’s sentencing.

Charges are pending against the six South Carolina defendants who were arrested since last March. It usually takes well more than a year from a person’s arrest on Jan. 6 charges until the case is resolved with a trial or a guilty plea.

In all the cases involving South Carolinians, evidence is substantial.

Evidence gathered by the FBI usually entails a combination of some or all of the following kinds of information: videos and photos that clearly identify defendants inside and just outside the Capitol; cellphone geolocator data; and postings by the defendants themselves on social media, including Facebook and Instagram, according to court records.

Often, the defendants were turned in by friends or relatives who called the FBI, according to court records. When the FBI showed up, sometimes in the form of SWAT teams, at their houses, the defendants usually admitted what they had done, according to court filings.

One common characteristic of the South Carolinians arrested is that nearly all were all supporters of then-President Donald Trump and had come to Washington because of his claims of a stolen election, according to a review court records in the 25 cases. In two cases involving recent arrests of South Carolinians, available records are not clear about whether they were Trump supporters.

Some have expressed remorse and now say they were misled by Trump and his falsehoods about the election.

For one defendent, Trump’s statements about the election had caused him to live in “fear and anger” and had cost him friends and his job as a high-end cook, George Tenney of Anderson County wrote in a letter to federal Judge Thomas Hogan at his sentencing in 2022.

Hogan sentenced Tenney to three years in prison, telling him that he had engaged “in a revolution against the United States.”

Facts in Tenney’s case showed he had grappled with officers in the early stages of the riot and then let 50 other people in the mob get into the Capitol, some of whom went on to fight with police inside the building, according to court records.

The ages of 25 arrested from South Carolina range from 19-year-old Elias Irizarry, who was a Citadel freshman on a holiday break, to 65-year-old Paul Colbath, a U.S. Army veteran who was a construction technician from York County.

Both pleaded guilty and served light sentences. Irizarry got 15 days in jail; Cobath, three months probation.

The stiffest sentence to someone from South Carolina — 44 months in prison — was given to Nicholas Longuerand, 27, of Little River, who pleaded guilty to assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers with a dangerous weapon. Longuerand had thrown heavy objects at police defending the Capitol and stolen an officer’s shield.

The occupations of those charged range from a Charleston lawyer to a long haul truck driver. Other occupations include a construction company owner and a small business owner.

Twenty-three of those arrested were men; two were women — Joei “Josie” Gallman, 42, of Fountain Inn, and Stacy Getsinger, of Dorchester County.

The U.S. Department of Justice said the more than 1,235 arrests in the Capitol breach cases are the result of the biggest investigation in the department’s history. More than 100 police were injured in battles with the rioters, according to the Department of Justice.

The FBI’s arrests of the 25 South Carolina defendants began just over a week after the Jan. 6 Capitol storming and have continued at a slow but steady pace.

On Jan. 15, 2021, agents charged Andrew Hatley, a truck driver, with various charges including demonstrating in a restricted building.

Nearly three years later last month, agents arrested two more South Carolinians on Jan. 6 charges.

One is Christopher George Rockey, 54, of Cross, in Berkeley County, who is charged with felony offenses of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers and civil disorder. The other is Edward Picquet Jr., 61, of Hollywood, in Charleston County, who is charged with a felony offense of civil disorder in a criminal complaint filed in the District of Columbia.

Crime, politics and conspiracy theories

The cases against the South Carolinians are unusual in that they lie at the intersection of crime, politics, the rule of law and conspiracy theories.

Trump is still, with no evidence, pushing the conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Meanwhile, some of his most prominent former defenders have been discredited.

Trump loyalist Rudy Guiliani recently lost a $148 million libel case for spreading lies about Georgia poll workers who Guiliani had publicly accused of adding votes to President Joe Biden’s total. Former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell has pleaded guilty in a Georgia criminal case alleging a conspiracy to steal votes for Trump.

Fox News, which promoted Trump falsehoods about a stolen election by airing unchallenged false claims that Dominion Voting Systems company had used its machines to deliver extra votes to Biden, paid $787 million to settle a libel lawsuit Dominion had brought against the conservative network.

Trump also faces state and federal criminal charges related to alleged conspiracies to steal the election. A sweeping federal indictment that could go to trial in March in Washington accuses Trump of orchestrating various plots to steal the election, including encouraging rioters to march on the Capitol the morning of Jan. 6 in a speech before the riot.

The 2020 election remains an unsettled political issue with many Republicans, many of whom are likely to say rioters were “mostly non-violent” and who remain sympathetic to Trump, according to a recent Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.

Current and former South Carolina law enforcement officials have little doubt about the seriousness of the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol.

Bart Daniel, a former South Carolina U.S. Attorney appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan, said, “This was a danger to the Republic. This was not something that was okay. This was not some kind of free speech argument, or right to protest argument — to stalk the halls of Congress and do what they did.”

People lose elections “all the time,” said Daniel, but up until Jan. 6, results of presidential elections have always been graciously accepted by the loser “because of love of country. What they did was not love of country.”

Bill Nettles, a former South Carolina U.S. Attorney under President Barack Obama, a Democrat, said the attack on the Capitol was a blow to what America stands for. In this country, when people lose an election, they can go to court, but when they lose their court battles, the tradition has been to lose gracefully and accept the results, Nettles said.

“Trump’s disdain for the democratic process is what provided the leeway to allow the riot to happen,” Nettles said. Because of Trump, “there are still people who have legitimacy issues with the election,” he said.

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said, “That was one of the saddest days in America when that riot occurred, and every one that participated needs to be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”

At sentencing hearings of South Carolinians, judges have called attention to the dangers of the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol.

One police officer suffered a heart attack, and four others were so traumatized they died by suicide within several weeks of the riot, Judge Hogan noted at Tenney’s December 2023 sentencing hearing.

“They (police) were under attack for hours by people who they thought were loyal Americans,” the judge said, adding congressional staffers were “cowering in the offices” while rioters chanted “hang (Vice President) Mike Pence.”