PHOTO: US JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
by Alex Lloyd Gross
Feb 10, 2023
Kevin Seefried, the Delaware male that carried a Confederate Flag into the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 will spend the next three years thinking about his actions. Sentenced this week by Us District Justice Trevor McFadden, he broke down and cried. He was the 12th rioter to make it inside the US Capitol and he stayed inside the building for an extended period of time, officials said.
“Bringing a Confederate flag into one of our nation’s most sacred halls was outrageous,” Judge McFadden said. Seefried is a drywall carpenter and lives in Laurel Delaware. He stormed the US Capitol with his son, Hunter, who earlier was sentenced to serve a two year prison term.
Seefried used the flagpole to jab at and threaten US Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman as they charged up a flight of stairs. According to Goodman’s testimony, Vice President Mike Pence was several feet away, down a corridor that Goodman successfully led Seefried away from. Through his lawyers, Seefried said he used the flag as a symbol of protest and not a symbol of hate.
“That flagpole was not only a weapon capable of causing serious injury; a Confederate Battle flag was affixed to it and it was brandished by a man standing at the front of a volatile, growing mob towards a solitary, Black police officer,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.
As with most rioters that day, Seefried posted about his exploits on social media. Almost 1000 people have been arrested for participating in the January 6th Insurrection. They claim they were there to support then President Donald Trump
. Sentences range from probation for the least serious participation, to 10 years in Federal Prison.