SC father and son plead guilty to Jan. 6 Capitol riot charges

A Lancaster County father and son who with other members of their family were part of the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, pleaded guilty Thursday afternoon in federal court, according to court documents and federal prosecutors.

Linwood Robinson Sr. and Linwood Robinson II pleaded guilty to “parading, picketing or demonstrating in a Capitol building” before U.S. Judge Amy Berman Jackson in federal court in Washington, D.C., plea agreements show.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington confirmed in an email to The State that both Robinsons pleaded guilty by video in a court hearing Thursday.

Sentencing will take place at a later, as yet unscheduled, date. The maximum penalty for this charge is six months in prison and a $5,000 fine.

Robinson II’s wife, Brittany Robinson, and his brother, Benjamin, are scheduled for a plea hearing Friday in Jackson’s court, according to court documents.

The Robinson father and son live in the Indian Land panhandle area of Lancaster County near Fort Mill. The area is just south of the North Carolina state line and is part of the Charlotte metro area.

All four Robinsons were arrested in May 2022 by the FBI. Charges against them have been pending ever since. A juvenile member of the family accompanied the Robinsons into the Capitol, but due to his age, he was identified only by initials, according to a plea agreement in the case.

An FBI affidavit and statement of facts that is included in the guilty plea agreement for both Robinsons who pleaded guilty Thursday said there was closed caption video footage and videos taken by other rioters and members of the media that showed their actions during the riot. Evidence also included Facebook pages and geolocation data on Robinson Sr.’s cellphone.

A complaint in their case says that the four Robinsons and the juvenile were among the first rioters into the Capitol and “breached the police line to gain access to the rest of the building.” At the time, the Capitol grounds and buildings were closed to the public, and the Robinsons had to pass through broken police barricades to penetrate into the grounds and the Capitol building, according to a statement of facts in their case.

The Robinsons were among a crowd of people close to activist Ashli Babbit when she was shot to death by an officer as she attempted to go through a window that led to a corridor to the House chambers, the complaint said. “Escalating violence” had caused officers to retreat from the area, the complaint said.

The Robinson family entered the Capitol through the Senate wing door at approximately 2:17 p.m., around five minutes after the first rioters breached the building by breaking windows and forcing open the doors, the affidavit said.

Then the family made their way from the Senate side of the Capitol to the House side, walking down a hall to the Capitol Crypt, breaching a police line and then proceeding along a long hallway toward the House wing door, the affidavit said. They then walked up a small spiral staircase to a corridor west of the Rotunda and Statuary Hall, where the House Speaker’s office is located, according to the affidavit and evidence in their case.

“They walked into the Speaker’s office suite for a few moments, and exited from across the suite through a different door,” the affidavit states. “Then they walked through Statuary Hall to join a growing crowd amassing outside of the House chamber. From there, they moved to an opening to the east and walked down the House corridors toward the southeast doors.”

At one point, the Robinsons joined a crowd chanting inside the Capitol, “Whose house? Our house!” according to a statement of facts in the case.

In all, they were in the Capitol approximately 30 minutes, according to a statement of facts in their case.

The Robinsons had attended then-President Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally before the riot and then walked to the Capitol, according to a statement of facts in the case. Trump and his associates had spread false claims before and during that rally that the November 2020 election had been stolen and that was the reason Trump lost. Some 60 courts have ruled there was no fraud substantial enough to change the election.

Trump and associates urged his followers to march on the Capitol on Jan. 6 and stop a joint session of Congress from doing a formal count of President Joe Biden’s electoral votes. The rioters shut Congress down for five hours.

Twenty people from South Carolina have been arrested so far in connection with the breach of the Capitol. Of those, 13 have pleaded guilty — including the two Robinsons who pleaded guilty Thursday — and so far have received sentences ranging from probation to 44 months in prison.

More than 1,000 people from nearly every state have been charged with offenses related to the Capitol breach. Approximately 340 of those have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees. Some 140 police officers were assaulted Jan. 6 at the Capitol, according to the District of Columbia U.S. Attorney’s office.

Rioters did more than $2.8 million worth of damage to the Capitol, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.