Pruitt, who pleaded guilty in early June to obstructing official proceedings, was part of a message from the group Proud Boys where members discussed plans to march on the Capitol and use violence on Jan. 6, according to prosecutors. “Their plans were not limited to fighting Antifa: they expected to go to the Capitol to stop the certification of the election and to confront the police who might try to stand in their way,” prosecutors wrote in court documents. At the time of the uprising, Pruitt was just a recruit waiting to officially join the far-right group. “To join the Proud Boys, the defendant would do whatever it takes,” one of the prosecutors, Alexis Jane Loeb, told Kelly during the sentencing hearing. During the attack, Pruitt was one of the first of the mob to enter several areas of the Capitol and destroy a large sign in the building, throwing it into a room, which prosecutors argued was intended to rouse the mob inside. Schumer’s protective detail told prosecutors they had to change the evacuation plan when they saw Pruitt in the building, who was just four or five seconds from the senator. Instead of exiting an elevator, Schumer and his detail ran down a ramp and closed the double doors behind them, prosecutors say. After storming the Capitol and being arrested later that day, Pruitt swore in the Proud Boys on President Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day two weeks later. Before he was sentenced, Pruitt, dressed in a prison jumpsuit with 1,776 tattoos on the knuckles of his right hand, told Kelly he still believed the 2020 election was stolen but admitted he broke the law. “I wish I could see it from a restaurant,” Pruitt said of Jan. 6, which he added was not “a good day.”
