Trump fan sentenced to eight years in prison for assaulting police officers during Jan. 6 Capitol breach

WASHINGTON — A Donald Trump supporter who assaulted law enforcement at the Capitol on Jan. 6, including a Capitol Police officer he helped knock unconscious when his head hit a metal railing, was sentenced Thursday to eight years in federal prison.

Stephen Chase Randolph, a 34-year-old Kentucky man, was identified after a facial recognition search matched an image of him at the Capitol to a photo on his girlfriend’s Instagram page. He was convicted after a trial last year of aggravated civil disorder, assaulting a police officer with a deadly or dangerous weapon and assaulting, resisting or obstructing another police officer.

Three of Randolph’s co-defendants — men who helped trigger the initial breach of the Capitol perimeter — were also sentenced Thursday: James Tate Grant to three years; Jason Benjamin Blythe to 30 months; and Paul Russell Johnson to five years of probation with intermittent weekend detention for the first year and two additional years of home detention.

Another co-defendant named Ryan Samsel — who held a giant flag depicting Trump as “Rambo” before attacking police officers on Jan. 6 — will be sentenced on Feb. 4, 2025.

Randolph’s eight-year sentence is among the longest ever handed down to a rioter who was not part of the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers seditious conspiracy cases. Only a handful of individual rioters who were not charged in conspiracy cases have received longer sentences. Among them: David Dempsey, who repeatedly assaulted officers in the Lower West Tunnel leading into the Capitol, was sentenced to 20 years in prison; Peter Schwartz, to 14 years; Danny “DJ” Rodriguez, who viewed Trump as a father figure and stuck a stun gun in former officer Michael Fanone’s neck, was sentenced to 12.5 years; Christopher Quaglin, to 12 years; and former New York City Police Department officer Thomas Webster, to 10 years.

The trial of Randolph, Grant, Blythe, Johnson and Samsel was marked by dramatic testimony from the first police officer injured in the riot: Caroline Edwards. Edwards, who testified before the House January 6 Committee in June 2022, testified at the men’s trial last October, saying she was briefly knocked unconscious when her head hit a stair railing after Randolph and other rioters rammed a bike rack into her during the initial breach of the barricades.

“The lights were on,” Edwards said, describing his mental state after hitting his head, “but there was no one home.”

When FBI special agents went undercover to speak to Randolph at the convenience store where he worked in April 2021, he recalled seeing “a female officer getting beat up” and said she must have had a concussion because she “had just been beaten up.” [laid] “There in the fetal position.” Edwards testified to the lingering impact of the attack, saying she suffered “excruciating” pain that required physical therapy and was stuck to her desk for a year and a half.

Randolph also assaulted another officer after he climbed over the bike rack, one of several used by law enforcement to try to keep rioters away from the Capitol. Federal prosecutors said it was clear he had no remorse. “It was really fun,” Randolph bragged to one of the undercover officers before his arrest.

After his arrest, federal authorities said Randolph minimized his behavior and lied during his custody interview with the FBI.

“You can’t just say, we’ve already accepted defeat, we lost, Joe Biden is president, hooray,” Randolph said during his interview, according to the FBI.

Randolph struck a different tone in a recorded call from a Kentucky detention center, prosecutors noted.

“I was caught up in the heat of the moment, everyone was cheering, chanting and screaming,” he said. “I was overwhelmed by the violence and I grabbed the fence and started shaking with everyone else. This woman fell and hit her head. It’s a disaster, I feel so bad.”

Randolph's defense team said the Kentucky man did not bring tactical gear to Washington on Jan. 6, as others had done, and that he “clearly got caught up in the mob mentality” after going to Trump's Jan. 6 speech, a trip he considered a “vacation” and a “break.”

“Going to see Mr. Trump speak in Washington DC was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for him,” they wrote.

About 1,500 people have been charged in connection with the Capitol attack, and federal prosecutors have obtained convictions against more than 1,000 Jan. 6 defendants and hundreds of prison sentences ranging from a few days behind bars to 22 years in federal prison.

Trump has called the Jan. 6 rioters “political prisoners,” “hostages,” “warriors” and “incredible patriots” and said he would pardon at least “a large portion” of them, which would be one of his first acts in the White House if elected in November. The former president is charged with crimes over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat and hold on to power; he has pleaded not guilty.

A federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan said earlier this year that the “destructive and erroneous rhetoric” used by some Republicans poses a danger to the country and that their “absurd” claims are an attempt to “rewrite history” about the Jan. 6 attack.

“The Court is accustomed to defendants refusing to admit wrongdoing,” said U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth. “But in my 37-year career, I cannot recall a time when such baseless justifications for criminal activity have become commonplace.”