A federal judge compared the January 6 mentality to ‘Nazi Germany’ at the sentencing of a Capitol rioter Judge Reggie Walton previously said Trump cares only about power — not democracy. Walton made the comment as he sentenced a Capitol rioter who blamed Trump for January 6. The rioter, Dustin Thompson, was sentenced to three years in federal prison. A federal judge on Friday appeared to draw a comparison between Nazi Germany and the period leading up to January 6, 2021 — in which former President Donald Trump and his allies falsely claimed the election had been stolen — saying that both involved large swaths of the public being swayed by a “demagogue.” Judge Reggie Walton made the remark at the sentencing of Dustin Thompson, a Capitol rioter who blamed Trump for his involvement in the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. As he sentenced Thompson to 3 years in prison, Walton said he was struck that the college-educated Capitol rioter fell into a self-described “rabbit hole” of conspiracy theories and came to believe false claims — spread by Trump and his political allies — that the 2020 election had been stolen. “It makes for a very difficult situation because I’m not unsympathetic to people being radicalized to engage in abhorrent behavior. We saw it happen in Nazi Germany — a very educated, intelligent population was able to be swayed to engage in the atrocities that took place in Germany based upon a demagogue,” Walton said. “It seems to me you bought into that same type of mentality,” the judge added, before saying it was “utterly scary” that many are “still buying a lie.” It was not the first time in Thompson’s case that Walton rebuked Trump over his efforts to lead supports into believing the 2020 election was stolen. In April, shortly after a jury found Thompson guilty, Walton expressed concerns about the future of American democracy and had harsh words for Trump. “I think our democracy is in trouble because, unfortunately, we have charlatans like our former president, who doesn’t, in my view, really care about democracy but only about power,” Walton said. “And as a result of that, it’s tearing this country apart.”
