A Marine reservist from New Jersey who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a “Make Politicians Afraid Again” hat was sentenced to two weeks of intermittent incarceration Tuesday for his role in the riot.
Marcos Panayiotou, 30, of Wrightstown, told a federal judge in Washington, D.C., that he’d been swept up in the mob outside the building that day, which described as “flowing through the doors like a wave of water.” He said he’d simply “followed the crowd.”
“I know it may sound tired and just trite, but I truly thought I was following the directives of President (Donald) Trump,” he wrote in a letter to the U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Freidrich. “Because of that, I truly understand the concept of herd mentality.”
