Jan. 6 defendant who directed rioters to Speaker’s Lobby sentenced to 75 days in prison

A judge on Thursday sentenced a man who during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol directed a crowd of other rioters to the Speaker’s Lobby, where one person died during the rioting, to 75 days in prison.

Jeffrey Register, of Jacksonville, Fla., was also fined $500, according to a Justice Department press release.

According to court documents, Register entered the Capitol from the west side and moved through the building as Capitol Police officers attempted to clear it. About half an hour after entering the building, documents said he ended up outside the Speaker’s Lobby and waved at a group of other rioters to come toward him.

“Minutes later, and with Register as a witness, Ashli Babbitt was killed while attempting to breach that hastily barricaded entrance,” a sentencing memo read.

Babbitt was shot by U.S. Capitol police while attempting to climb through a shattered window at the barricaded entrance to the Speaker’s Lobby.

According to court documents, Register was photographed during the riot and when interviewed by FBI agents on Feb. 24, 2021, he initially lied before he eventually admitted to entering the Capitol.

He also admitted to performing a factory reset on his phone to delete evidence linking him to the rioting, the sentencing memo said.

The 39-year-old Florida man was charged with violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority and engaging in disorderly or disruptive conduct in any restricted building or grounds.

He pleaded guilty in October to parading, demonstrating and picketing in a Capitol building.

Register’s attorneys argued that he should receive a light sentence because he was “fed lies and disingenuous directions by people that should have known better,” according to the sentencing memo .

“He was not the cause of January 6, nor was he in the classification of people that caused physical harm to the Capitol or others,” his attorneys argued . “He entered the building, but his unlawful entrance cannot, and should not, be conflated with the many other, wider, failures that occurred that day.”

But prosecutors had argued for jail time because Register had appeared to be “excited” during the rioting and had initially lied to the FBI before his confession.

“Rather than avoid or retreat from the chaos within the U.S. Capitol that day, Register appeared excited by it, and on several occasions burst past a line of law enforcement officers himself or encouraged or led others to do the same,” prosecutors argued, according to the sentencing memo.

More than 750 defendants have been arrested in all 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., in connection to the Jan. 6 rioting, according to the Justice Department.