MD Proud Boy Sentenced To 55 Months In Prison For Jan. 6 Riot

WASHINGTON, DC — A Proud Boys initiate from Maryland who nearly came face-to-face with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer while storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced to more than four years in prison this week for his role in the event.

Joshua Pruitt, 40, of Silver Spring and formerly of Washington, D.C., was sentenced today to 55 months in prison after he and other pro-Trump supporters entered the Capitol as a joint session of Congress convened to certify President Joe Biden's electoral vote win. Pruitt pleaded guilty in June to obstruction of an official proceeding.

Following his prison term, he will be placed on three years of supervised release, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia. He also must pay $2,000 in restitution.

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According to court documents, Pruitt was in the process of joining the far-right group Proud Boys when he attended the Jan. 6 rally with members of the group. Pruitt, who marched to the Capitol wearing tactical gloves with knuckle pads, pushed through a line of law enforcement officers and up the stairs to the building's Upper West Terrace. Pruitt made it onto the stairs using a piece of fencing as a makeshift ladder, according to prosecutors, before he entered the building through the Senate Wing doors.

After entering the Capitol, Pruitt breached a police line inside the building and moved toward the Capitol Visitor’s Center. At the same time, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and his security detail were approaching a ramp near the elevators in the Capitol Visitor's Center when they spotted Pruitt, according to authorities. As a result, Schumer and his security detail reversed course, running away from the elevator and back down the ramp.

"One look at Pruitt, and the leader of Senator Schumer’s security detail immediately saw the threat," Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, wrote in a sentencing memorandum obtained by The New York Times.

"This Proud Boys initiate was a one-man symbol of the angry mob at the Capitol that day," Graves continued.

According to authorities, Pruitt left the building shortly after 2:50 p.m. He was arrested that night for violating a city curfew and federal charges were filed against him the next day.

"I don't feel like I did anything wrong, but knowing the consequences that came out of it would be the part that would make me question it," Pruitt told CNN during a January 2022 interview. "They want me to come forward and say that it was planned and I'm like, no, it wasn't."

In the 19 months since Jan. 6, 2021, more than 860 individuals have been arrested in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the Capitol breach. More than 260 individuals have been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement, according to authorities.