A California man who confronted cops at a set of doors to the U.S. Capitol building and got sprayed with mace on Jan. 6 was sentenced for possession of an illegal weapons cache, including an AR-15-style rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition.
US Attorney Phillip A. Talbert issued a press release on Monday, sentencing Benjamin Martin, 46, to three years and two months in prison for illegally possessing several firearms and ammunition. A one-day trial found Martin guilty of the firearms charges.
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The weapons case came to light in September 2021, when the FBI executed a search warrant at his Madera home in connection with the January 6 breach.
Agents, prohibited from possessing firearms due to a prior domestic violence conviction, seized eight firearms during the search, including an AR-15-style rifle, multiple high-capacity AR-15 magazines, and more than 500 rounds of ammunition.
He choked his then-girlfriend and dragged her back into the house after she attempted to flee, according to officials.
Martin instructed his current fiancée to lie to authorities shortly after his arrest, claiming that the firearms seized from his home belonged to her and her father and that he was unaware of them. Officials enhanced Martin’s sentence for witness tampering.
Martin’s role in the Capitol riot led to his conviction in June. He attended Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally before walking to the Capitol building, where he noticed a large crowd covering a set of stairs and some people scaling the building’s walls.
“You guys are not doing your job,” Martin told officers guarding the building’s doors. You swore an oath. You are bound by your word. “Get out of the way and let us in.”
When the officers did not respond, Martin yelled, “Our house,” into the officer’s face.
One of the doors, opened from the inside, allowed a rioter to exit the building. Martin reached past the officers in front of the door, grabbed it, and entered the building as other rioters poured in behind him, according to authorities.
Inside, a larger group of officers pushed Martin and other rioters out the door, but they remained in the doorway. According to prosecutors, Martin held the door open while other rioters began to tackle, shove, spray, and hurl objects at the officers.
The officers attempted to retreat into the building and close the door behind them, but Martin continued to open it. One officer attempted to remove Martin’s hand from the door by striking it with a baton, but Martin did not stop.
The officer continued to swing his baton at Martin’s hand, but Martin was able to grab the door while another rioter sprayed him with mace. The officer grabbed the door and tried to close it, but Martin grabbed it again and attempted to keep it open. Finally, a group of officers shut and locked the door. A few minutes later, Martin reopened one of the doors.
Martin remained in the area for more than an hour as rioters attempted to re-enter the building despite police firing mace and pepper spray into the crowd.
“We are going to rise up against an oppressive government,” Martin declared, telling the officers to “walk away” from their positions before eventually leaving the area.
Court documents show that Martin later told a news outlet that he was attempting to de-escalate the situation.
“There were people trying to break into the building, and I was trying to calm everyone down and to get it to be a little bit peaceful and say, ‘Hey, guys, you know, we can be here, and we don’t need to act out,'” Martin recalls.
Some protesters were hurling rocks at buildings, a behavior that is not typical of Trump supporters.” Trump supporters do not try to break windows or doors.
He claimed that “other groups” were breaking in, and he attempted to position himself between the mob and the police.
“I was trying to negotiate with both sides to de-escalate the issue,” Martin told reporters. “I was in the middle of the front door when the herd—thousands of them—came up behind me. All this weight of people starts moving you in a direction, and I couldn’t control anything at that point.
Someone he’d known since high school alerted the FBI to his presence, pepper-sprayed him in news footage, and sent agents a screenshot of him circled from an ABC “World News Tonight” clip, leading to his arrest. The tipster had been friends with him on Facebook but had unfriended him when his views became more political.
Martin’s sentencing in the Capitol breach case on December 20 will result in additional prison time and fines.