PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) — A man from Hampton Roads who wore a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt at the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was sentenced to 75 days in federal prison on Thursday.
Robert Keith Packer had pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of unlawful picketing and parading.
“Mr. Packer showed the world who he was on Jan. 6 by both his deeds and his actions,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mona Furst said Thursday in court, NBC News reported. “He posted his belief on his clothing that day.”
He was arrested the week after the insurrection and was later released without having to pay bond.
Packer, who owns property on the Peninsula, was one of several people from the Hampton Roads region arrested after the attack.
He said he went up to Washington, D.C. from Newport News on Jan. 6, 2021, “to attend the rally” held by former President Trump before he “entered the [Capitol] despite seeing broken windows and tear gas deployed by police.”
U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols, a Trump appointee, called Packer’s sweatshirt “incredibly offensive,” NBC reported, but said there wasn’t evidence that Packer attacked law enforcement that day.
