Trump appointee who assaulted Capitol officers on Jan. 6 sentenced to nearly 6 years

WASHINGTON — A former Donald Trump political appointee at the State Department who tried to storm the Capitol and assaulted law enforcement officers on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced to 70 months in prison on Friday.

Federico Klein was arrested in March 2021 and convicted of eight felonies as well as misdemeanor offenses by U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, also a Trump appointee, in July 2023 following a bench trial.

Klein did not speak during his sentencing hearing and declined to comment after the hearing when NBC News asked him if he continued to believe that the election was stolen and if he had any regrets about his actions that day.

McFadden said that Klein's conduct was "shocking and egregious," and suggested his sentence would have been higher had Klein not already been on home detention for two years. Klein, McFadden said, was "intent on breaking into the building," and said he was "astonished" by Klein's behavior on Jan. 6.

"This is a government of laws, not of men," McFadden said, adding that Klein seemed determined to reverse that maxim. McFadden said he'd seen no evidence that Klein felt remorse.

The government had sought 10 years in federal prison for Klein, saying he "was likely motivated by a personal benefit — namely, continued employment as a political appointee — when he attacked the U.S. Capitol." They pointed to messages he sent ahead of Jan. 6 — “Hell yea I’m going. I’m a Trump appointee" — as well as the fact that he "took time off from work at the State Department to volunteer to travel to Las Vegas" to investigate the false claims that the Trump campaign was making about mass voter fraud.

“You can’t stop this!” Klein yelled during one of the assaults in the lower west tunnel at the U.S. Capitol, which was the site of some of the worst violence of the attack. At one point, prosecutors said, Klein "wedged a police riot shield in between the doors, helping to force the doors back open and allowing rioters to continue their assaults on police."

McFadden imposed the sentence following a sentencing hearing on Friday. Klein was represented by attorney Stanley Woodward, who represents several Trump aides who have been caught up in federal investigations surrounding the former president.

Woodward said during the sentencing hearing that the government was most concerned with "the publicity" of the case. He pointed out that prosecutors had noted Klein was the first presidential appointee arrested in the attack and that they had cited his work for the Trump administration when seeking pretrial detention. Woodward noted that Klein had not made "a single public statement" about the case from the beginning, unlike other rioters.

Woodward said that while he and Klein "disagree on many things, politically, environmentally and otherwise," they were able to have civil conversations about issues and that Klein knows that the ballot box is where the nation's disagreements should be settled.

"We don't need a 10-year sentence for Mr. Klein to deter the general public," Woodward argued. "He is a changed man."

More than 1,100 people have been arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and more than 400 have received terms of incarceration. The longest prison sentence handed out so far went to former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com