WASHINGTON — The federal judge overseeing presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 criminal case on Thursday sentenced a Capitol rioter who assaulted police officers to more than 4.5 years in prison.
Anthony Mastanduno — known to online sleuths as “Shield Grampy” — pleaded guilty to nine criminal offenses in March, which was when Trump was originally supposed to be on trial in his own Capitol attack case under the trial schedule laid out by Judge Tanya Chutkan back in August. (Trump’s case was paused as the Supreme Court considers his immunity claim.)
Mastanduno’s arrest came in August 2023, a few weeks after Trump was arrested in the Jan. 6 case against him brought by special counsel Jack Smith.
But Mastanduno’s case has not been subjected to the same delays as the Trump case. Chutkan ordered Mastanduno into custody after he pleaded guilty in March. Trump, by comparison, is appearing Thursday night at a debate with President Joe Biden.
Federal prosecutors had argued for six years behind bars for Mastanduno, saying he “participated in some of the worst violence inflicted upon law enforcement officers at the Lower West Terrace Tunnel during the assault on the United States Capitol.”
One officer Mastanduno assaulted called Jan. 6 “horrific” and “life-changing,” saying the memories left him having trouble sleeping and difficulty trusting others. He considers Jan. 6 to be “forever [his] [d]arkest day,” prosecutors wrote.
A defense memo cited Mastanduno’s work as a volunteer firefighter and his time in the Marine Corps, and it includes a lengthy redacted section about the 61-year-old’s physical and mental health.
In the nearly 3.5 years since the Capitol attack, federal prosecutors have charged more than 1,400 people and secured convictions against over 1,000 defendants. More than 540 of those defendants have been sentenced to periods of incarceration that range from a few days behind bars to 22 years in federal prison for a Proud Boys leader convicted of seditious conspiracy.
