Feds seek 13 months in prison for ex-Chicago firefighter who stormed US Capitol with right-wing militia group
Federal prosecutors are seeking more than a year in prison for a retired Chicago firefighter who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with a far-right militia group and tried to force his way through a line of police officers to an area where some lawmakers had taken shelter.
Joseph Pavlik, 66, of Chicago, “came to the Capitol prepared for violence” and “fanned the flames of the mob” through his actions that day, prosecutors wrote in a memo filed on Friday seeking a sentence of 13 months behind bars.
Pavlik, who retired from the Chicago Fire Department in 2013 after a 33-year career as a firefighter, pleaded guilty in August to one count of entering restricted grounds with a dangerous weapon.
His attorney, Lawrence Beaumont, filed a memo if his own Friday evening asking for a term of probation, calling Pavlik a dedicated public servant whose participation in the events of Jan. 6 “was a less-than-one-hour departure from a lifetime of otherwise law abiding, respectful, and helpful citizenship.”
Pavlik is scheduled to be sentenced Friday, Dec. 1, by U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden.
According to prosecutors, Pavlik was a member of the Guardians of Freedom, an organization founded by his nephew and loosely affiliated with the right-wing militia group Three Percenters.
Pavlik made numerous right-wing statements in the weeks leading up to the Capitol attack claiming that the election had been stolen from then-President Donald Trump and calling for violent action, prosecutors said.
“These aren’t Americans they are indoctrinated socialists that hate America and hate Americans,” he allegedly posted on Facebook in December 2020. “We need to be much more brutal than punching and kicking. This is not some simple street disagreement.”
On Jan. 6, Pavlik met up with other members of a Three Percenters-aligned faction called “Group B” to serve as “security” at Trump’s rally to protest the certification of the Electoral College vote by Congress, according to the charges.
He was later seen in surveillance images and police body-worn camera footage wearing a gas mask and vest with patches depicting anti-government phrases, including, “When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty,” prosecutors said.
Once at the Capitol, Pavlik and five other members of his group joined a throng of rioters trying to force their way past a line of officers defending the building’s west terrace tunnel, which provides “immediate and unobstructed access to sensitive areas and offices used by members of Congress.”
Some members of Congress were sheltering in place near that entrance, prosecutors said.
Pavlik was among the first to start skirmishing with the officers, who remained “under siege for almost two and a half hours from Pavlik and others,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joshua Ontell wrote in his 25-page sentencing memo.
“After Pavlik pushed against officers in the tunnel for about 10 minutes, police successfully expelled him,” Ontell wrote. “Nevertheless, he stayed at the tunnel entrance and took out a canister of chemical spray that he had brought with him.”
Video of the assault showed Pavlik was jostled by the mob and fumbled the can before he could use it against officers, Ontell said. But as he walked away from the tunnel entrance, he passed another can of chemical spray to a rioter, who “grabbed it and blasted officers with spray multiple times,” the filing stated.
Though the attempt by the rioters to gain access through the tunnel eventually failed, Pavlik stayed at the west terrace site until officers cleared it with tear gas hours after the assault began, according to Ontell.
The other members of Pavlik’s group, who are all from Florida, were arrested in the last year on charges stemming from the same tunnel incident, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Following the riot, Pavlik posted statements on social media “alternately whitewashing his actions, shifting blame, and encouraging insurrection,” Ontell wrote.
In August 2021, he called the ongoing investigation into the attack a “farce” and labeled members of Congress “filthy demon rats,” according to the prosecution filing. Two months later, he posted a comment on a friend’s Facebook page saying it was “past time” for the overthrow of the government.
“We need an insurrection or a revolution and it has to be so convincing that the left will never raise their head above ground again,” Pavlik allegedly wrote.
Ontell said that despite his relatively normal middle-class upbringing, “Pavlik’s criminal conduct on Jan. 6 was the epitome of disrespect for the law.”
Pavlik’s attorney wrote in his filing that Pavlik has no previous criminal history, did not harm anyone on Jan. 6 and never entered the Capitol building.
In addition to his service as a firefighter, Pavlik volunteered at ground zero after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York, where he spent two weeks “sifting through the disaster site searching for bodies, and body parts,” mostly by hand, Beaumont wrote.
Six months before the events at the Capitol, Pavlik suffered a devastating family tragedy when his only child, Joseph Jr., a Justice police officer and suburban SWAT team member, killed himself, Beaumont wrote.
Pavlik was among some 42 Illinoisans to be federally charged as part of the ongoing investigation into the Capitol attack, which prosecutors have described as one of the largest criminal investigations in American history.
Nationwide, more than 1,200 people have been arrested in all 50 states and the District of Columbia on charges stemming from the Capitol breach, according to the U.S. Justice Department.
