COLUMBIA, S.C. — A South Carolina husband and wife who believed the 2020 presidential election was stolen and who smoked a joint inside the Capitol Rotunda on Jan. 6, 2021, were each sentenced to prison Tuesday.
John Getsinger Jr. and his wife, Stacie Ann Hargis-Getsinger, both of Hanahan in Berkeley County, were sentenced in a Washington courtroom Tuesday to serve 60 days each in prison.
So as not to disrupt their home, U.S. Judge Emmet Sullivan said the couple can serve their two-month sentences sequentially. John Getsinger will report to prison by Sept. 15, and Stacie Ann Hargis-Getsinger will report by Feb. 15.
Their offense was parading or demonstrating in a Capitol building, whittled down from more serious charges in exchange for a guilty plea in a plea bargain.
Evidence in the case showed the two were enthusiastic supporters of Donald Trump who believed the former president’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Although the Getsingsers didn’t destroy any property or physically impede or strike any officers, their conduct was reprehensible in other ways, prosecutor assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Franks told the judge.
As part of a violent mob that staged a “violent attack that forced an interruption of the certification of the 2020 Electoral College vote count, threatened the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 Presidential election, injured more than 100 law enforcement officers, and resulted in more than one million dollars’ of property damage,” Stacie Ann Hargis-Getsinger needed to go to prison, if only for a short spell, Franks said in a sentencing brief.
“Even if she didn’t personally engage in violence or property destruction during the riot, before entering the Capitol on January 6, Hargis-Getsinger watched with elation as rioters fought the police in close proximity to her,” Franks wrote.
In her immediate presence, other rioters screamed, ‘We’re storming it! We’re taking it! Charge!’”
Franks wrote the couple then went into the Capitol, joining a large group of rioters who physically pushed police and “entered the building through the Rotunda doors as those officers struggled to keep them out.”
The couple went into the Capitol Rotunda and stayed inside the Capitol for approximately 39 minutes, Franks wrote.
Months after the riot, Stacie Ann Hargis-Getsinger expressed no remorse and spread lies on social media that the riot had been peaceful and that Black Lives Matter and antifa had been at the Capitol, Franks wrote.
“In sum, Hargis-Getsinger proudly participated in the riot that she would later deny occurred; she spread propaganda about law enforcement, and she falsely downplayed the violence at the Capitol,” Franks wrote.
Franks wrote much the same about John Getsinger, stressing that just because they weren’t overtly violent, that doesn’t lessen their culpability for taking part in an event that could have led to the overthrow of the government.
“As this Court knows, a riot cannot occur without rioters, and each rioter’s actions — from the most mundane to the most violent — contributed, directly and indirectly, to the violence and destruction of that day,” Franks wrote.
‘I am so deeply ashamed of my actions that day’
The two had used the Berkley County Growth & Development Group public Facebook page to help coordinate a bus trip to Washington on Jan. 6 with like-minded people.
Once in Washington, the couple attended Trump’s rally, then walked with the crowd toward the Capitol, Franks wrote. Along the way, the couple chanted with the crowd that included yelling obscenities outside the Department of Justice, Franks added.
Outside the Capitol, the Getsingers watched rioters battling with police, then followed the rioters who had forced their way into the Capitol, Franks wrote.
While in the Capitol, they went into the office of House Republican Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy, of California.
Charles George, the lawyer representing the couple, called their actions “horrible decision-making.”
In statements to the judge, the couple said their lives had been upended by publicity about the arrests, and friends and family had stopped speaking to them. They also said it’s been hard to get a job.
John Getsinger urged the judge not to send his wife to prison, saying the whole trip to Washington was his idea.
Both expressed remorse and assured the judge they would never participate in anything like this again.
“I am so deeply ashamed of my actions that day,” Stacie Ann Hargis-Getsinger told the judge.
Although prosecutors recommended a maximum sentence of 45 days, Sullivan gave them 60 days and a brief lecture.
“No one is punishing you because of your political beliefs,” the judge said. “Everyone has different opinions these days about everything: abortion, guns, politics, you name it.
“But we have to express our disagreements in a lawful way,” the judge added.
The prison sentence is meant to serve not only as a deterrent for the Getsingers, the judge said, “but to others who might come here and think they have a right to storm the Capitol.”
So far, eight of the 16 people from South Carolina who were arrested in the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol have pleaded guilty. Of those eight, seven have been sentenced to terms varying from home detention, probation to 44 months in prison.
In all, more than 850 people from nearly every state have been arrested in the Jan. 6 storming in what the U.S. Justice Department has called its largest criminal investigation ever.
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