Tom Pappert, lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, said members of the Tennessee congressional delegation have not shown an interest in taking up J6 prisoner Ronald Colton McAbee’s case due to the level of “fear” surrounding the overall defense of J6 defendants.
Last month, McAbee was sentenced to almost six years in prison, three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $32,165 in restitution after being convicted and pleading guilty to six felony charges and one misdemeanor charge for being present at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
The FBI arrested McAbee in the parking lot of the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office – where he was employed as a deputy – on August 17, 2021. He has been incarcerated ever since.
McAbee’s wife, Sarah, appeared on Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show. She expressed her frustration with the Tennessee congressional delegation for not giving her or her husband “recognition” for ensuring his physical safety, placing him in prison no more than 500 miles from his place of residence, and advocating more for the release of J6 defendants.
Pappert said there is a level of “fear” among Republican lawmakers of being “framed by the Democrats as supporting a violent insurrectionist,” which may be the reason Tennessee lawmakers are not urgently looking into McAbee’s case.
“I think I understand the reason. I think there is a lot of concern among the Congress, both in the Senate and the House, that nobody wants to look like they are championing a violent person, but it’s just not the case with Ronald McAbee,” Pappert explained on Wednesday’s episode of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show. “He was not violent on January 6th. He’s not a violent individual.”
Pappert went on to explain the charge McAbee pled guilty to was “impeding a police officer’s official investigation” and not assaulting a police officer, which should squash lawmakers’ fears of supporting the Tennessee prisoner.
“In fact, if you look, the charge he pled to is USC 1811 a., and if you look at that, there are three separate parts. One of them is indeed assaulting a police officer, but what Ronald pled to was impeding a police officer’s official investigation. So he did not actually plead to assaulting anybody, and I think there’s a lot of fear. I think that this is an election year, I think a lot of folks are concerned about being framed by the Democrats as supporting a violent insurrectionist. I think these fears are unjustified because I think the facts are the facts and they will set us free,” Pappert said.
“I think that there is a lot of fear and a lot of uncertainty and doubt among congressmen. I think that they have the ability to do the right thing, the brave thing, and stand by a constituent who is being railroaded by a crooked Biden Department of Justice,” Pappert added.
In regards to McAbee’s unfair treatment while incarcerated awaiting trial and during his jury trial in Washington D.C., Pappert said some of the charges McAbee was convicted of may have been “applied improperly” to his case, as many of the charges have been given to “thousands” of other J6 defendants.
“The majority of [the charges] are the same exact type of charges that were given to hundreds, thousands of January 6th defendants, some of which, by the way are, currently being considered by the Supreme Court because they may have been applied improperly,” Pappert explained.
Pappert also noted how U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras did not allow McAbee’s defense team to play the audio from a video tape of McAbee’s interaction with a fallen metro police officer during the riot, which showed the officer acknowledging and thanking McAbee for his help.
“They played the tape but the jury was not able to hear the audio. So they saw a silent film while the defense attorneys attempted to explain what was being said,” Pappert said.
“We’re living in America in 2024, where every police officer in this country is constantly under threat and being micromanaged… And yet, if you are a Capitol Hill police officer, your actions are unquestionable. No matter what, you are right and the other person is wrong. This seems to be a standard that only existed for about a half hour on January 6th, never existed before, and never will again after because this country has a bias against police most of the time,” Pappert added in a general sense of what unfolded at the Capitol on January 6.
– – –
Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Ronald McAbee” by Sarah McAbee.
