By Richard Sullins | richard@rantnc.com

One Sanford man is among the nearly 1,500 pardoned by President Donald Trump for participating in the 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol following his inauguration on Monday.

David Joseph Gietzen of Sanford was convicted in August 2023 of felony and misdemeanor charges for assaulting law enforcement officers and other conduct intended to disrupt official proceedings of Congress to count and certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. Gietzen was among those pardoned by Trump.

Trump promised many times during the 2024 presidential campaign that freeing the men and women who stormed the Capitol – the most serious assault on the Capitol building since the British tried to burn it down in 1814 – would be among his first acts after he took the oath of office. He often referred to them as “political prisoners” or “hostages.”

Between the time of Gietzen’s conviction and his sentencing the following April, he skipped a scheduled court appearance in October 2023 to surrender himself for confinement and became a fugitive for nearly 60 days. Most of that time was spent in Lee County until December 12 of that year, when he was taken into custody by a U.S. Marshal at his mother’s home and returned to Washington to await sentencing.

Judge Carl Nichols, appointed to the federal bench by President Trump in 2019, sentenced Gietzen to six years behind bars and a fine of $2,000. Gietzen initially spent time at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia while his paperwork was being processed before he was transferred to another federal prison facility in the Midwest.

Gietzen was among the more than 1,250 persons who were convicted or pleaded guilty over the past four years that were pardoned by the president in connection with the events that played out on live television for five hours that afternoon. Trump’s executive order made no distinction between those convicted of non-violent offenses and others found guilty of violent crimes during the affair. The vast majority, including Gietzen, received pardons, meaning they would not only regain their freedom but also soon be on the pathway to having their civil rights restored, such as the right to vote and the ability to purchase and own a firearm.

Gietzen was indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington on charges that stemmed from his participation in the riot, including two counts of assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers with a dangerous weapon, which may have been a long metal pole that he is seen to be carrying in several photographs contained within the indictment.

Two other charges were levied against him for assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers, one for engaging in physical violence on Capitol grounds, and four others related to his participation in the mob violence. The assault charges against police officers were felonies.

He was first charged in a criminal complaint in March 2021 and indicted by a federal grand jury in April of that year, but the FBI failed to locate him at the time, and he was never arrested in connection with that initial complaint.

At the time, the FBI was pursuing thousands of suspects who had fled the scene, investigating nearly 30,000 tips from a hotline and another 200,000 digital media tips, all part of the largest FBI investigation in history, bigger even than those connected with the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Gietzen was first identified by a tipster who contacted the FBI after seeing his picture posted on the agency’s website. A second person gave a positive identification from the same photograph and a third believed it might have been him but said he hadn’t seen Gietzen in a few years.

Meanwhile, investigators began to build their case against Gietzen by assembling a picture of his movements around the Capitol campus and methodically reviewing the photographic records created that day.

In one picture made on the National Mall just below the Capitol sometime before 2:13 p.m. that day, Gietzen is seen wearing jeans, knee pads, dark shoes, and a distinctive green jacket. He had shoulder-length brown hair, a short beard, and a mustache. It was the jacket and a white helmet that he appeared to put on near the Capitol that allowed for him to be easily spotted in both still and moving pictures.

The indictment alleged that Gietzen assaulted several law enforcement officers on the west terrace of the Capitol between 2:13 and 2:31 p.m. that day, using the pole in the last of his attacks. In photographs and video made during the melee, he can be seen shoving one officer and reaching for the throat of another.

The crimes committed at the Capitol were among the most documented in American history. In Gietzen’s case, it took more than a year for investigators to assemble what they believed was a complete visual record of his actions. In doing so, they reviewed the thousands of pictures made at the scene and the millions of individual frames of video footage that were available almost immediately through social media.

The FBI seized Gietzen’s cell phone as evidence when he was taken into custody in May of 2022. The phone contained records of text messages he had either sent or received describing his activities on January 6 and of plans for a second attack two weeks later.

Returned to Washington for Biden inauguration

The FBI first heard of Gietzen on January 16 – 10 days after the insurrection – when it received a report about text messages in which Gietzen and an unnamed brother said they wanted to meet up with others at the Capitol on January 20 as President Biden was being sworn in.

The DOJ’s statement of facts in the case says in the reported text messages “their plan was to force their way in the Capitol building to force Congress to hold another election, and that the Gietzen brothers were also at the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.”

An FBI agent was able to reach him by telephone on Tuesday, January 19, and Gietzen said he and his brother were en route to Washington on that same day for the inauguration. He said he had no plans to commit any acts of violence.

He told the agent the brothers had attended the protest in Washington on January 6 but did not make it to the Capitol because of the large crowd. But the many photographs made by other participants and posted online, as well as others made by the media and security footage, show Gietzen wearing his green jacket, scuffling with police as they attempted to hold the line in defense of the legislators and staff members inside the building.

The pictures also show Gietzen on the exterior terraces on the West Front of the Capitol mere feet from the entrance of a tunnel where officers were making a last stand to prevent the rioters from entering the building. Others show him, pole in hand, appearing to strike the plastic shield being held by an officer on the steps leading to the Capitol’s west front.

In all, there were dead and injured on both sides. Because many of the rioters left the scene before dusk, the number of persons within the mob who were injured may never be known. Around 140 police officers suffered injuries that day, and nine persons are known to have died in connection with the events.

With the pardons, commutations, and dismissals of charges, the January 6 riot has moved now from an active legal phase to another relegated to history, all by the stroke of a pen. It’s unknown when David Gietzen was officially released and whether he will return to Sanford.