A United States Navy veteran and Oath Keeper who rioted at the United States Capitol on January 6 while wearing a Depends adult diaper was sentenced to time served this week.
At his sentencing hearing on Friday before U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta, a Barack Obama appointee, Thomas Caldwell, 70, learned that he will not be held in custody any longer, according to court documents. Following his arrest in 2021, he was incarcerated for 53 days at Virginia’s Central Regional Jail.
Caldwell was cleared of charges of seditious conspiracy. His conviction for obstructing Congress was overturned in June by the United States Supreme Court, which ruled that it had been applied incorrectly to the Jan. 6 defendants.
In their supplemental sentencing memo, prosecutors stated that Caldwell conspired with other Oath Keepers affiliates to forcibly oppose the certification of the 2020 presidential election. They claimed he joined the mob that attacked the Capitol.
Caldwell stated, “I heard that Pence f—ed us.” So I grabbed my American flag and yelled, ‘Let’s take the damn capitol, storm it, and hang the traitors.'”
Caldwell, for example, “climbed the steps after breaking 2 rows of barricades, then got on the parapets” while cheering when “the people in front of me broke through the doors and started duking it out with the pigs who broke and ran,” as he “Then we started stealing the cops riot shields and throwing fire extinguishers through windows.”
Caldwell thought “it was a great time,” according to court documents.
“But when it became clear, roughly a week later, that law enforcement was investigating Caldwell and his associates, he destroyed evidence of their involvement in these crimes,” according to the government’s submission.
“Caldwell’s efforts to obstruct the investigation into the attack on the Capitol, like his participation in the attack itself, show a disdain for the rule of law that merits the government’s recommended sentence.”
Caldwell’s attorney, David W. Fischer, wrote in an email to The Associated Press, “Mr. Caldwell was cleared of the four most serious counts and sentenced to no additional jail time by a highly respected federal judge.”
“Obviously, he should be considered for a pardon by President Trump,” the attorney said, referring to the returning president’s repeated promises to grant clemency to Jan. 6 participants.
According to court documents, Fischer claimed that the government planned an expensive, pre-dawn “Waco-style raid” on Caldwell’s home, complete with a battering-ram tank, a dozen agents wielding machine guns, and laser dots pointed at Mrs. Caldwell’s forehead.
“The FBI, as noted in previous filings, mistakenly believed that ‘Commander Tom’ — a reference to Caldwell’s Navy rank- was the ‘Commander’ of the Oath Keepers; that Caldwell was scouting an attack on the Capitol via a ‘pre-strike recce,’ which turned out to be a quest to determine the number and location of Port-o-Potties near the Ellipse and ended at Camelot D.C.; that Caldwell personally led a group of Oath Keepers inside of the Capitol; that Caldwell physically entered
“The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia at the time, Michael Sherwin, admitted that his office engaged in fast-moving ‘shock and awe’ tactics to dissuade future events like January 6,” according to the statement.
“The Government was obviously in a rush to make January 6 related arrests, which resulted in an unnecessary pre-dawn raid of Caldwell’s farm.”
He was one of several Oath Keepers accused of crimes related to the Jan. 6 riots, including leader Stewart Rhodes, Law&Crime reported.
His wife told the jury that her husband was wearing “Depends” adult diapers that day, as previously reported by Law&Crime.
She denied that her husband intended to break the law or overthrow the government, claiming he was in severe back pain from multiple surgeries that day. One such surgery, she explained, required pinning her husband’s shoulder to keep it in its socket.
