WASHINGTON — A Capitol riot defendant who used tear gas behind a pro-Donald Trump mob chasing police inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 advanced to a GOP primary runoff election Tuesday in a Georgia House district, according to NBC News projects.
Charles Hand III, who goes by Chuck Hand, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in connection with the Jan. 6 attack. He is running for the Republican nomination in Georgia’s 2nd Congressional District, currently held by Democratic Rep. Sanford Bishop.
In Georgia, if no candidate crosses the 50% threshold in a primary, the top two vote-getters move on to a runoff. Hand will face Wayne Johnson, who worked in Trump’s Department of Education and is leading Tuesday’s vote count, June 18.
The eventual GOP winner will be an underdog to Bishop in the solidly Democratic district in the general election.
As part of his October 2022 plea deal, Hand admitted that he wrote after the attack that he saw a crowd of people “rushing the Capitol Police” and that “tear gas, rubber bullets, sledgehammers, etc. did not stop them.” ” Hand and his wife, Mandy Robinson-Hand, traveled to Washington from Butler, Georgia, and went to the Capitol, where Hand admitted to “breaking a piece of metal fencing and placing it in the back pocket of his pants” during the chaos they proceeded to enter the Capitol.
Video footage shows Hand and his wife walked under an emergency door that officers tried to close as members of the mob chased officers inside the Capitol. Several members of the Proud Boys were around them at the time. Hand admitted that inside the Capitol, he walked toward an altercation between law enforcement and rioters, but that his wife pulled him away, “discouraging him from intervening.”
After the riot, Hand contacted a cousin who was in local law enforcement and who told him “that ‘the feds are slow’ and they would come after you, just wait,” according to a sentencing memo in his case. arrested in March 2022 and sentenced to 20 days of imprisonment in January 2023.
Hand wrote a letter to the court saying he “had no desire to return to Washington” and that after the sentencing he would “get in my truck and drive back to Georgia, where I belong, and never return to Washington DC unless Georgia voters decide.” to dismiss me as their representative someday in the future.
Hand also spoke about the “stigma” associated with the case.
“I now know that I should never have entered the Capitol and I fully understand the impact of my actions,” Hand wrote in a letter to the court. “I am very remorseful, this experience has impacted my life beyond anything I could imagine.
Hand is not the only Jan. 6 rioter trying to return to the Capitol as a member of Congress. Last week, Jan. 6 crime defendant Derrick Evans — who was a member of the West Virginia legislature when he stormed the Capitol — lost his Republican primary race to incumbent Rep. Carol Miller .
More than 1,400 people have been charged in connection with the Capitol attack, and more than 1,000 have been convicted. Hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants received probation, but more than 500 defendants were sentenced to periods of incarceration ranging from a few terms behind bars to 22 years in federal prison.
News Source : www.nbcnews.com
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