One of the three active Marines who participated in the invasion of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 was sentenced this Monday to 279 hours of community service and four years’ probation.
Community service hours represent one hour for each Marine who was killed or wounded in the Civil War.
District Judge Ana Reyes said that, reading the sentence, she could not understand why ‘Marino’ Dodge Hellonen violated his oath to protect the United States Constitution “against all its enemies, domestic and foreign” and risked his career by join the January elections. January 6, 2021 riots that disrupted Congress certifying President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
“I recommend that you think about what happened so you can resolve the issue and make sure this does not happen again,” Ana Reyes said.
Dodge Hellonen, now 24, was the first of three Marines to be punished for participating in the Capitol siege.
The judge is also expected to sentence defendants Micha Coomer on Tuesday and Joshua Abate on Wednesday.
The three Marines, friends from the same unit, traveled together from a military post in Virginia to Washington DC on January 6, when then-President Donald Trump spoke at his ‘Stop the Robbery’ rally near the White House.
The young people then joined the crowd that invaded the Capitol after Trump urged his supporters to “fight like hell.”
Before imposing the sentence on Hellonen, Judge Reyes described how Marines fought and died in some of the fiercest battles in American history, and recited the cost of some of the bloodiest wars.
Hellonen, Coomer and Abate pleaded guilty earlier this year “to parading, demonstrating or picketing the Capitol building,” a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in prison.
Hundreds of Capitol rioters pleaded guilty to the same charge, which is similar to criminal trespass.
Source: TSF
