The man who threatened to assassinate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been sentenced to 28-months behind bars.
The North Carolina man drove cross-country with an assault rifle on January 7th, the day after the January 6 riots in Washington D.C.
In an emotional hearing on Tuesday, Cleveland Meredith Jr., Judge Amy Berman Jackson called the riots the “definition of tyranny,” saying, “Let the record be crystal clear that it is not patriotism, it is not justified to descend on the Capitol at the behest of a candidate who lost an election and terrorise others.”
“Canceling the votes of others at the point of a gun is the antithesis of what this country stands for,” she added.
Cleveland Meredith Jr. pleaded guilty in September to sending threatening communications, including a text to a friend the day after the riot suggesting he was thinking of attending an event with Pelosi and “putting a bullet in her noggin on Live TV.”
Meredith had intended to be part of the January 6 riots, but issues with his car meant he arrived after it had ended.
The New Yorker reported that an F.B.I. affidavit showed he sent a text on January 6th that read, “I’m trying but currently stuck in Cambridge, OH with trailer lights being fixed, crappers.” Later, he texted, “Just fixed…headed to DC with a shit ton of 5.56 armor piercing ammo 😈.”
Meredith was one of the first people charged in relation to the January 6 riots, and the second to be sentenced to related charges.
Feeling alarmed by her son’s extremist social media posts and increasing mental health difficulties, Meredith’s mother reported her son’s concerning texts to the FBI on January 7.
Agents found the father of two in a hotel one mile from Washington D.C with a handgun, an assault rifle and thousands of rounds of ammunition stored in his trailer.
Arriving in Washington on January 7th, Meredith stayed at a hotel and sent his uncle a text suggesting plans to assassinate the House Speaker on live television.
In other texts to friends, Meredith said he may shoot the mayor of DC, and that he was “ready to remove several craniums from shoulders. He also said he would rather die than go to jail.
“I predict that within the next 12 days, many in our country will die,” Meredith wrote.
After one friend reached out via text, saying “Cleve, be careful! I’m worried about you,” Meredith responded, “Lol, jus havin fun. My Spy name is: DoubleODipshit.”
In another text, he wrote, “I may wander over to the Mayor’s office and put a 5.56 in her skull, FKG cu*t…I hope you’re reading this Mr. FBI agent, FK U.”
On Facebook, Meredith described his desire to “eradicate” and “obliterate” the enemy. One post insinuated that it would soon be “hunting season” on “SATANIC SCUMBAGS.”
During his sentencing on Tuesday, the fifty-three year old apologised for his actions.
“I was out of control that day and I apologise to speaker Pelosi if I scared her,” he said. He also said he would attend therapy after his jail time, adding that he is “done with politics.”
“This is not who I am, this is not who I want to be” Meredith said, crying. “This is not who I want to be remembered as.”
Meredith’s friends and family spoke on his behalf during the hearing, including his parents, and two close friends.
They testified about Meredith’s’ decade long spiral into extremism and paranoid right-wing views, and his eventual radicalisation into QAnon.
One friend named Tyler Dixon, said that the first time he heard of QAnon was when Meredith visited his house four years ago.
“I wish I had known more of the details of what was going on,” Dixon said in court. “I could’ve helped. I should’ve called more. He needs to disengage.”
Describing his son as “a great person who had fallen from grace into far-right-extremist territory,” Meredith’s father said that if he could “get out of that mess it’s going to make a world of difference.”
His mother said that it was an “intervention of god” that circumstances enabled her son to miss the riots on January 6, adding the reason she reported him to the FBI was because she “thought we were saving someone’s life.”
Judge Jackson said that the accused’s family had a “selective and distorted” opinion of his decades long struggle with mental illness.
“The bounds of decency and the bounds of the law have not changed one bit and they need to be enforced,” she added.
Meredith will serve out the rest of his 28-month sentence, after spending eleven months already in a D.C facility since his arrest.
Image: CNN