October 31, 2023 12:03 PM UTC

2x4-Wielding January 6th "Tourist" From Colorado Sentenced

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• by: Colorado Pols

Denver7’s Óscar Contreras reports on the sentence handed down yesterday to Jacob Travis Clark of Colorado Springs, once proud to have been one of the first to make his way into the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021 with the intent of taking control of the building and thus preventing the certification by Congress of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential elections:

A Colorado Springs man who claimed to be the first person to break into the Senate Chambers before hitting a police officer with a wooden plank during the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol was sentenced Friday to nearly three years in prison and a year of supervised release for his role in the events that day, officials with Department of Justice announced Friday…

Prosecutors said Clark drove from Colorado Springs to Washington, D.C. to attend former President Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse where the DOJ claims the suspect “anticipated violence,” as evidenced by texts he sent to his father that day, in which Clark reportedly wrote he was there “for the riots when they say he isn’t the winner lol.”

After the rally, prosecutors said, Clark walked to the West Front of the U.S. Capitol grounds and joined the thousands of other rioters who were forcing their way through the barricades, while texting his friends that the group was “gonna storm the capital (sic).”

Making good on his promise to “storm” the U.S. Capitol, somewhere along what Rep. Lauren Boebert recently described as “an escorted tour into the Capitol” Clark came into possession of a piece of 2×4 lumber–and like any “escorted tourist” could be excused for mistakenly committing on such an exciting spontaneous “guided tour,” assaulted a U.S. Capitol police officer tour guide with that very same piece of lumber! This is the special crime committed by Jacob Travis Clark to distinguish himself from January 6th insurrectionists who merely walked through an already-smashed doorway and gawked:

“Clark was then observed walking down the hallway from the Senate Wing Door toward the Crypt holding a 2×4 wooden plank. Moments later, a U.S. Capitol Police Officer (USCP) was hit with the wooden 2×4 plank, which forced the officer to retreat into the Crypt in visible pain,” prosecutors said, adding Clark, who later joined a crowd of rioters, pointed at police and threatened them, which forced police to retreat as the mob made their way deeper into the building.

Unfortunately for Mr. Clark, his moment of excessive enthusiasm during his “escorted tour” of the Capitol on January 6th, 2021 netted him 33 months in prison, some of which we assume he has already served along with the roughly two dozen January 6th rioters from Colorado who Boebert calls “political prisoners.” It’s true that this kind of behavior could be a blind spot for Rep. Boebert, who seems to herself have profound difficulty controlling her enthusiasm.

If the coup had succeeded and Donald Trump had remained in office, Clark and the January 6th “political prisoners” would have been hailed by Boebert as national heroes. But it didn’t succeed, and that makes Clark just another inconvenience for would-be conspirators like Boebert to sweep under the rug as “escorted tourists.”

For the insurrectionists who believed in what they were doing, Boebert’s is a betrayal that sticks.