William Chrestman, 50, of Olathe, Kan., brought a two-foot-long wooden ax handle and told a Capitol Police officer, “If you shoot I’ll f—–g take your a-s out,” he admitted in plea papers. He also shouted to a crowd amassed in front of a police line, “Do you want your house back!? … Take it!”
“I can’t recall seeing a more direct encouragement to rioters that day to run through police and go to the building than that,” U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly told Chrestman, who pleaded guilty in October to threatening a federal officer and obstructing Congress’s confirmation of President Biden’s 2020 election victory. Four people in the crowd died on Jan. 6 and a Capitol police officer died after collapsing one day after confronting the mob. At least 140 police officers were assaulted.
Chrestman stood out among rioters. He was a tall, bearded man who brought tactical gear, a helmet, gas mask and hard knuckle gloves. And he thanked followers “for helping us — Proud Boys” as he moved with members of the far-right group who marked themselves with orange tape.
He was also notable as one of the lower ranking “tools” who prosecutors claimed were used by four Proud Boys leaders — including Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and others convicted of seditious conspiracy — to spearhead the attack. Chrestman approached one of the leaders to march with them that day, according to evidence in their four-month trial before Judge Kelly, but was not otherwise publicly tied to their organized plotting for violence to keep Donald Trump in power.
Still, Kelly said that once it began, Chrestman played no “small role” in the political violence. Holding a wooden club with an American flag attached that he bought after he learned he could not bring a firearm to D.C., Chrestman repeatedly waved rioters forward and urged them to stop arrests. He threatened and pursued retreating police officers and interfered with a security barrier that would have sealed the Capitol basement, according to court filings.
Chrestman bragged in a call he recorded later about how “cops were legitimately scared” for their lives.
Chrestman’s victims were “not just the law but the people who make the law” and “the machinery of our system that ensures the peaceful transition of presidential power,” said Kelly, a 2017 Trump appointee.
Kelly said he believed Chrestman’s dedication to his family would keep him from reoffending, but it was important to send a message to others that Jan. 6 was “more than extremely serious — it was a national disgrace.”
Defense attorney Michael J. Cronkright called Chrestman’s actions “extremely aberrant” for the former Army medic, but that he took responsibility for his actions by pleading guilty. Cronkright said his client never followed up on his threat or used his wooden club “to do anything remotely violent,” and that his remark about police running for their lives was aimed at an officer who may have been out of earshot and who was firing pepper balls at rioters.
Chrestman apologized to those affected by his conduct, including, above all, his wife and three daughters. He shared an emotional embrace afterward with his two oldest children, who attended the hearing.
Chrestman said he “felt intoxicated” by the excitement and noise of the crowd. “I now see my statements and actions in a much truer light … I’m ashamed of what I said and did that day, and ashamed my daughters saw them,” he said.
He continued, “There are many things I regret saying and for that I am truly sorry,” adding, “I’m sorry that police and people were injured and scarred by Jan. 6.”
Chrestman was arrested with and the first to be sentenced among a group of others: Christopher Kuehne and Louis Enrique Colon of Kansas City, and Arizona siblings Felicia and Cory Konold, who joined the Proud Boys group that morning. All four have pleaded guilty to rioting. A fifth co-defendant, Ryan Ashlock, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor trespassing or disorderly conduct at the Capitol and was sentenced to 70 days in jail.
Prosecutor Andrew S. Haag requested a term of 63 months, saying Chrestman played “a role of leadership and of violence” that told others “it was okay to attack police … and commit more crimes of violence” against them.
Cronkright asked for a sentence of time served, or 35 months, at the D.C. jail where Chrestman has been held since shortly after his arrest in February 2021, and where he was among inmates recorded singing the national anthem in a video Trump played to start the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign.
Cronkright asked that his client complete his remaining time at a U.S. Bureau of Prisons facility near a suburb of Tulsa, where he said Chrestman’s family plans to relocate after his release.