Alabama’s Lonnie Leroy Coffman was sentenced on Friday to 46 months in prison for his incredibly terrifying part in the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington, D.C. Coffman, who is 72 years old, filled his pickup truck with weapons and the makings of Molotov cocktails, then parked it a few blocks away from our nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Coffman was arrested near the Capitol on Jan. 6, indicted on Jan. 11, and in November, Coffman pleaded guilty to “possession of an unregistered firearm and carrying a pistol without a license.” He was one of the people walking around Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, illegally, with a loaded handgun while Trump and friends looked to overturn our elections and install a dictator into office.
In a letter sent to the judge before sentencing, Coffman wrote, “At my age, one of the most precious (things) we possess is time, and I have wasted almost a whole precious year.” U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said that Coffman’s statements—including his letter to her—still did not explain why he had “almost a small armory in his truck, ready to do battle.”
Coffman, a Vietnam veteran, reportedly arrived in D.C. in December. During that time, he reportedly attempted to contact a U.S. senator (not named in the court documents) for “help with the election fraud he saw.” Prosecutors said that he was not seen as a threat at that point, and while Coffman did not enter the Capitol building on Jan. 6, he did join the march to the Capitol building. And while Coffman was not accused of being a part of the riot or insurrection on the Capitol grounds, his truck was a cornucopia of evidence against him. While law enforcement was doing sweeps in the D.C. area, after pipe bombs had been discovered, they came upon Coffman’s truck.
Inside the pickup truck were several loaded firearms within arm’s reach of the driver’s seat, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, large-capacity ammunition feeding devices, a crossbow with bolts, machetes, camouflage smoke devices, a stun gun, and a cooler containing 11 mason jars filled with ignitable ingredients for Molotov cocktail incendiary weapons. Coffman also carried a loaded handgun and a loaded revolver as he walked around the area that day. A search of Coffman’s residence in Alabama later that month led to the discovery of 12 additional mason jars containing ignitable substances, each constituting the component parts of Molotov cocktails.
Listen and subscribe to Daily Kos' The Brief podcast with Markos Moulitsas and Kerry Eleveld
Also discovered in the truck were a bunch of papers with notes and addresses, including a quote misattributed to Abraham Lincoln, saying, “We The People Are The Rightful Masters Of Both The Congress And The Courts, Not To Overthrow The Constitution But To Overthrow The Men Who Pervert The Constitution.” Coffman’s paperwork connected him to a group called Camp Lonestar. Camp Lonestar is a militia group’ that seems to spend most of its time cosplaying patrol guards along the southern border.
In November, Coffman told the court that the Molotov cocktails in his car were present with him in D.C. because he just had them there for a long time. “I didn't plan any action with those things... they had been in my truck for some time... I didn't plan on blowing nothing up."
Back in November, Newsmax’s Greg Kelly had Coffman call into his show from jail to say that he needed money for his defense. Coffman told the Newsmax audience that he and others were not “terrorists,” nor were they “insurrectionists,” and in fact, “We are patriots, and we love our country. We even sing the national anthem every night at 9 o’clock.” Whether or not Coffman was in what has been called the “Patriot Wing” of the jail isn’t known, but the likelihood is that he was incarcerated with some of the more extreme elements of the insurrection.
Coffman is one of only nine defendants in the Jan. 6 insurrection who has been sentenced to more than a year in prison. Coffman will be placed on three years of supervised release following his prison term.
RELATED STORIES:
Man who brought explosives and guns to D.C. on Jan. 6 enters guilty plea
With only each other for company, insurrectionists’ extremism deepens in ‘Patriot Wing’ of D.C. jail