New video footage obtained by HuffPost (above) shows a Capitol rioter who was later sentenced to more than five years in prison throwing a fire extinguisher, a plank of wood and a traffic cone at police officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. And a little later, it shows police shooting him with a “less than lethal” munition.
In December, Robert Scott Palmer received at the time the longest sentence of anyone involved in the riot — 63 months in federal prison — after he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers using a dangerous weapon, inflicting bodily injury.
Palmer was taken into custody in March 2021, 12 days after HuffPost verified his identity. He was previously known to online sleuths as #FloridaFlagJacket until he confirmed his identity in an interview. Palmer initially said that the Biden administration was trying to “vilify the patriots” who were involved in the riot and that “I didn’t do anything wrong.” Then he hung up when HuffPost asked about the fire extinguisher. He turned himself over to authorities a few days later, according to his lawyer.
The new video evidence includes a series of clips showing Palmer’s movements and actions on Jan. 6, as outlined in prosecutors’ December 2021 sentencing memorandum. The first clip shows Palmer, photographed earlier holding a sign that says “Biden is a Pedophile,” leaning over the Capitol’s Upper West Terrace railing at around 4:30 p.m. According to the sentencing memo, he was watching the moment when “one of the [Metropolitan Police Department] officers was pulled out of the [Lower West Terrace] tunnel and attacked by rioters.” (Two men can be overheard saying in the video, “They have a cop, I wouldn’t give him back,” and “Fuck him, I’d drag his ass out to the fucking yard.”)
Another clip shows Palmer on the steps outside the Lower West Terrace tunnel a few minutes later, having acquired a wooden plank. The video shows him throwing it at the police like a spear. Then, in another clip, Palmer is at the front line of the fight with the police. He’s seen throwing a fire extinguisher and a traffic cone at the officers after pushing a large roll of canvas wrapped around a piece of scaffolding at their legs.
About 20 minutes later, in the next clip, Palmer is at the Upper West Plaza, where the video shows him picking up a stick or pole off the ground. The following clip shows him approaching a line of Virginia State Police officers with the pole. According to the sentencing memorandum, he ignored officers’ warnings to drop it and later “threw the pole like a spear at the officers.” An officer fired a 40mm “less than lethal” munition at him, which hit Palmer in the abdomen, causing him to retreat.
In the final clip, Palmer shows off his new wound to the crowd at the Capitol, portraying himself as the victim. “This is the United States,” he says. “This is what our country is doing to its citizens.”
Palmer apologized for his actions in a letter to the judge handling his case shortly before sentencing. “They were the tyrannical ones desperate to hold on to power at any cost, even by creating the chaos they knew would happen with such rhetoric,” he wrote, referring to former President Donald Trump and those acting on his behalf.
BuzzFeed, HuffPost’s parent company, was part of a coalition of press organizations that petitioned the court to release video evidence from Palmer’s case. Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, the Washington, D.C., federal judge who handled Palmer’s case, granted the request Thursday.
