At a sentencing hearing for a January 6th insurrectionist, Senior District Judge for DC Reggie Walton warned that the nation must back off political violence because the United States is at a critical point where democracy is at stake, CBS News reports.
“It’s scary going forward as a country where we end up,” Walton, a George W. Bush appointee, said. “Because what happened on January 6 is not something that’s just in the past. It, unfortunately, is something that still haunts us because the individuals who instigated what occurred are still engaging in the same rhetoric that resulted in the frenzy that took place on that day. This is a very serious situation because it goes to the root of what we are supposed to be as a democracy.”
Walton was hearing the case of 21-year-old North Carolinian Aiden Bilyard, who was sentenced to 40 months in prison for actions that included spraying police with bear spray and trying to break a window in the Capitol with a baseball bat, which Republicans claim is a piece of sports equipment, not a weapon.