Trump fan who assaulted officers with a hockey stick on Jan. 6 is sentenced to prison
Michael Joseph Foy who attacked police on Jan. 6 with a hockey stick because he believed Donald Trump's lies about the 2020 election was sentenced to prison.
WASHINGTON — A Donald Trump enthusiast who believed the former president's lies about the 2020 election was sentenced Wednesday to more than three years in federal prison for assaulting law enforcement officers with a hockey stick during the brutal battle at the lower west tunnel of the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack.
Michael Joseph Foy was arrested in January 2021 and was initially held in pretrial detention. He was found guilty of felony charges in June. Federal prosecutors sought more than eight years in federal prison, saying Foy assaulted officers with a hockey stick and a sharpened metal pole after he traveled to Washington with a "TRUMP 2020" flag.
Michael Joseph Foy outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.U.S. District Court for the District of ColumbiaBut U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan — who is overseeing Trump's delayed federal trial on charges he tried to overturn his 2020 election loss by conspiring to obstruct Congress and disenfranchise American voters — said Wednesday that the Justice Department's request was "unreasonable" and that it didn't factor in Foy's military service and other factors in his life in the lead-up to Jan. 6. Chutkan ultimately landed on a sentence of 40 months, meaning Foy will end up serving an additional two years and a few months in federal prison.
Foy, according to the FBI, had shown up after the 2020 election at the TCF Center in Detroit, where Trump supporters spun up lies about the election process, harassed poll workers and banged on windows to try to stop absentee ballots from being counted. In court Wednesday, his attorney said Foy's mother and stepfather were "ardent Trump supporters" who also bought into Trump's lies about the election, which made him more susceptible to the misinformation that Trump and his allies were spreading.
Elizabeth Mullin, one of the federal public defenders representing Foy, argued that giving him a lengthy sentence wouldn't stop future potential rioters from responding to false claims and heated rhetoric from political candidates going forward. A sentence for a random Jan. 6 rioter, she argued, wouldn’t have that much of a deterrent effect when prominent figures — including Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president — continue to spread lies about the 2020 election. Chutkan avoided getting roped into a discussion of Trump’s culpability for the Capitol attack ahead of the trial she'll oversee.
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