Kasey Hopkins got right to the point in his recent letter to U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan expressing remorse for his involvement in the Capitol riot.
“Ma’am you have my rap sheet and to my shame it’s not a good one,” began the Kansas City, Kansas, window contractor in a 3½-page note written prior to his sentencing Monday on a misdemeanor charge. “...I was sent to prison in the summer of 2002. It’s important to me that you know.”
Prison, Hopkins told the judge, “was the single best thing to happen to me!” After getting out, he said, he turned his life around, started a now-successful business and tried to make amends to those he had wronged.
But on Jan. 6, 2021, Hopkins attended the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, D.C., then walked to the Capitol, breached it twice and entered a senator’s private office, where he took pictures of rioters ransacking the room.
On Monday, after a lengthy lecture about the seriousness of his Jan. 6 actions and expressing shock at his criminal past, Chutkan sentenced Hopkins to four months’ incarceration followed by 24 months’ probation. Hopkins, 48, also must pay $500 restitution for the nearly $2.9 million in damages the government says were caused by the riot.
His sentencing hearing was held via video conference in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
A nervous Hopkins addressed the judge just before she handed down the sentence.
“I’m ridiculously ashamed to be here right now,” he said, but added that he was not the man he used to be. “If there’s any takeaway from January 6, it was that I allowed myself to get caught up — and bringing fear to people is something that goes against everything I am. I can say that through that experience, I understand that the mob mentality is a very, very real thing, and I can say that punishing me — I can understand that — but punishing those who have helped me get where I’m at is something that I, the weight that I will bear on my shoulders if that happens.”
He acknowledged that he had spent seven years in prison for a rape conviction.
“But from that day, until this, I still think about it, and it is a motivator to make sure that I continue to move forward,” he said. “And anybody’s path I cross, if I can help or assist in any single way, that I will try and do my best to make sure that after meeting me, they’ve left me being glad that I was in their lives...”
Chutkan praised Hopkins for undergoing “some personal transformation and growth during the time you were incarcerated that led you to be on the path to try to be a better man” and said that “I think you’ve in a great, large part, succeeded.” But she said the crime that sent him to prison 20 years ago “was one of the more disturbing sexual assaults I’ve read about in a long time.”
She described the events of Jan. 6, 2021, as “no less than an attempt to overthrow the government to halt the lawful transfer of power that has gone on uninterrupted in this country since its founding.”
“...You may have pleaded to a misdemeanor,” she told Hopkins, “but that does not fully encompass or describe how serious the actions of that mob were on January 6.”
The fact that he attended the rally knowing that it might turn into something resembling a civil conflict “really boggles my mind,” Chutkan said.
“And then having attended that rally, and even getting caught up with the crowd walking on to the Capitol, that you would make the decision to cross the line, literally and figuratively, and go into that building not once, but twice, is really amazing and very disappointing.”
Hopkins was arrested on Aug. 5, 2022, and charged with four misdemeanors. In December, the government dropped three of the charges in exchange for his guilty plea on one count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.
He faced a maximum sentence of six months’ incarceration, five years’ probation and a $5,000 fine. Prosecutors had requested a sentence of four months’ incarceration, three years’ probation, 60 hours of community service and $500 restitution.
Hopkins is among nine Kansas residents charged in connection with the Capitol riot. To date, six have pleaded guilty and have been sentenced, and the cases of three others — two Olathe Proud Boys and a Topeka man all facing felony charges — are ongoing.
According to the government’s sentencing memorandum, Hopkins flew to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5 to attend the “Stop the Steal” rally. Two days before he left, the document said, Hopkins solicited another person to go with him “and discussed the potential of a ‘Civil War.’”
“He even proposed forming a group of ‘Proud Felons for Trump’ when he heard the Proud Boys might not accept men with felony convictions,” the document said.
The document included a text exchange between Hopkins and someone it labeled Person 1, who was unable to accompany him because of work.
“I am ready for the Civil War and will definitely take off work for that,” Person 1 texted. “Proud of you for going there now.”
The document said Hopkins replied: “Civil War would suck! However, if s— gets outta hand we’ve gotta plan. Hope you do too!”
Person 1 said he’d tried joining the Proud Boys online after Trump told the far-right extremist group to “stand back and stand by” during a 2020 presidential debate. But he said he got no response.
Hopkins’ response, according to the government’s sentencing document: “We should start a PFFT Proud Felons For Trump.”
The document said that after attending Trump’s rally on Jan. 6, Hopkins walked to the Washington Monument.
“According to a statement Hopkins gave to law enforcement, while there, he observed another individual with a noose,” it said. “Hopkins then walked to the Capitol, and described the scene as a bunch of pirates who had overtaken a ship, and that it was anarchy and chaos.”
Hopkins entered the Capitol around 2:54 p.m., the document said, and recorded the unfolding events with his phone. He left the building after about three minutes, it said, but less than 10 minutes later re-entered through the Senate Wing Door, where nearby windows had been broken and furniture overturned.
Hopkins walked down a hallway and entered the private office of Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley, of Oregon, the document said.
“Inside, there was a crowd of people ransacking the office and smoking marijuana,” it said. A man wearing a fake beard, Capitol riot defendant Brandon Fellows, sat in a chair, and Hopkins took a picture of Fellows with Fellows’ phone.
After leaving Merkley’s office, Hopkins made his way to the Crypt, stopping to take a selfie in front of a bust of Winston Churchill, the government said. Hopkins left the building around 3:15 p.m. and stayed on the grounds until at least 4:20 p.m.
Hopkins told the FBI “that he saw human feces on the ground outside the Capitol as he was leaving” and that “he did not observe any police waving people inside the Capitol,” according to the document.
The memorandum contained extensive details about Hopkins’ “lengthy and troubling criminal history dating back to 1994.”
Most notably, it said, Hopkins was convicted in 2002 for forcible rape, for which he was sentenced to seven years’ in prison.
Online Missouri court records show that Hopkins pleaded guilty on Feb. 24, 2003, to one count of forcible rape, one count of forcible sodomy, third-degree domestic assault (a misdemeanor) and felonious restraint. He was sentenced to prison for seven years and is now a registered sex offender.
Hopkins also has at least eight other convictions for offenses including assault on a law enforcement officer, assault in the third degree, operating a motor vehicle without a license, possession of a controlled substance and non-support, the government’s sentencing document said. And while under periods of supervision for many of those convictions, it said, Hopkins was convicted of additional crimes, including two assaults and possession of a controlled substance.
Hopkins’ own sentencing memorandum, however, describes him as a compassionate and generous business owner who has turned his life around, is remorseful for his actions, lives to serve others and is a respected member of the community. The document includes letters of praise from friends, his ex-wife and step-daughter.
“Kasey has a very loving heart, filled with kindness and determination that has enabled him to pull his life back together after making admittedly poor decisions over 2 decades ago,” wrote Laura Waldon, who said she’s known Hopkins for nearly eight years.
She said he was “a good and honest person” who through his business donates time and material to projects for churches and charities.
Before going to prison, Hopkins wrote in his letter to the judge, “I was cocky and I was a cheat and a liar. I stole and used people. I manipulated people and took what wasn’t mine. I used my past and my shortcomings as a crutch and never took responsibility for anything.”
Prison, he said, “gave me the opportunity to reflect on my life and how I allowed myself to become such a drain on my loved ones and society. ...I knew that if I Never-Ever wanted to be in a place like prison then I needed to change EVERYTHING about me.”
In his letter, Hopkins told the judge that his trip to D.C. “was well intentioned in the beginning.”
“But, it was not well thought through that day,” he wrote. “When I saw the chaos occurring I should have used better judgment and headed home. I did not and for that I am truly sorry.
“I now realize how frightened and terrorized our members of congress, staffers and Capitol law enforcement must have been. I am ashamed and very sorry for having contributed to imposing unnecessary fear and unjustified anguish on my fellow Americans who were doing their best (to) carry out the lawful transition of power. I will forever regret my decision to be a part of this.”
