The following story contains slurs in quotations.
Tim Hale-Cusanelli, the former U.S. Army reservist and alleged white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer found guilty of obstructing Congress on Jan. 6 as well as a host of other crimes, should serve a little over six years in prison, prosecutors recommended Friday.
Hale-Cusanelli, a 32-year-old New Jersey resident, was found guilty of a single felony count of obstruction of an official proceeding as well as four other misdemeanor charges including disorderly conduct and entering a restricted area.
At trial before the Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, prosecutors recounted to jurors how Hale-Cusanelli led rioters on toward the Capitol and urged them with cries of “advance, advance!” to push past barriers and police officers defending the complex and lawmakers, staff and media inside.
In the early hours of Jan. 6, Hale-Cusanelli clocked out of his overnight shift as a security guard at the Naval Weapons Station Earle in New Jersey and set out for Washington, D.C. The drive was just under four hours and he wanted to attend the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally organized by far-right extremist Ali Alexander.
Sporting a gray suit and a red “Make America Great Again” cap, once in town, he only stuck around for part of the rally, court records show. He quickly made his way to the Capitol afterward. Hale-Cusanelli—who was among some of the very first Jan. 6 defendants to go to trial—would be one of the first of former President Donald Trump’s supporters to breach the building.
Prosecutors said he was inside less than 90 seconds after the very first rioter entered.
On Jan. 6, Hale-Cusanelli moved bike racks to let the mob pass. He shouted at officers—including calling one officer a “cunt” as he screamed that the “revolution will be televised”—and he was among those who flooded the Capitol Crypt, the building’s central hub and entry point for multiple pathways inside the Capitol.
Police were fending off armed rioters and a wave of chemical irritants. Brawls were active and police were scrambling to control the crowd and make arrests. Video footage from inside the Crypt shows Hale-Cusanelli preventing one Capitol Police officer from making an arrest before he marauded to the Capitol Visitor Center.
The goal for the time, prosecutors say, was met. The certification was stopped.
After he lingered near the Senate chamber, Hale-Cusanelli eventually left by way of a window. But before he returned to New Jersey, he collected a souvenir found on the ground outside the Capitol: a large Trump flag. He took it with him.
The FBI later seized the flag as evidence.
At trial, jurors heard jarring witness testimony about the former Army reservist. Appearing under a pseudonym, Hale-Cusanelli’s roommate known as “Mark Jacobs” recounted how Hale-Cusanielli was entrenched in antisemitic lore and conspiracy theory. Their conversations often turned dark.
Jacobs was approached by law enforcement a week after the insurrection and agreed to wear a wire.
On one recording captured by Jacobs, Hale-Cusanelli fawned over Jan. 6, saying he couldn’t believe how “exhilarating’ it was. He remarked, too, that it would have been possible to capture the building entirely “if we had more people.”
Another civil war, he continued, would give America a “clean slate.” When his wired-up roommate asked him whether he would participate in another Jan. 6-type event, Hale-Cusanelli offered his hearty approval. Especially if it would give him a chance to be part of “a historical event,” he said.
And when his roommate suggested that a second civil war would end with a “whole bunch of fucking people [dying]” Hale-Cusanelli responded coolly: “Yeah. Well, you know, as Jefferson said, the price—the tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
The conversation devolved into a ranting and raving about Jews controlling now-President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. If he were made “king of America,” he said, he would give Jews “24 hours to leave the country” and “purge Congress.”
Govt Sentencing Memo for Hale Cusanelli by Daily Kos on Scribd
Long before Jan. 6, prosecutors say Hale-Cusanelli was an open white supremacist with a violently nationalist worldview. He would dress up as Adolph Hitler at work, grooming his mustache to match. Work associates would later tell prosecutors that Hale-Cusanelli espoused extremist views on the job, intimidated Jewish coworkers, and at least one Navy petty officer told prosecutors that Hale-Cusanelli once said, “Hitler should have finished the job.”
Before he went to trial, defense attorneys pushed hard to keep Hale-Cusanelli’s racist and sexist worldviews shrouded, arguing that those details were irrelevant to his charges. Though his internet search history and personal cell phone were steeped in white supremacist, pro-Hitler, pro-Nazi ephemera, Judge McFadden ruled that admitting those details into evidence would unfairly prejudice Hale-Cusanelli.
Per WUSA, McFadden said at the time: “The visceral reaction to the defendant’s statements is exactly the kind of response that could induce the jury into finding him guilty.”
In the end, jurors were not fully exposed to the extent of his Hitler fetish, but some of Hale-Cusanelli’s racist comments snuck in for consideration. In particular, a text where Hale-Cusanelli discussed the “theft” of the 2020 election. It would be done through “nigger rigging,” he said.
The New Jersey man took the stand at trial this May and defended his remarks as jokes, albeit “disgusting” ones.
“I really like attention and I like talking a lot,” he said.
As a person who is half Jewish and Puerto Rican, he told jurors, his remarks were “self-deprecating humor,” according to NBC News.
“Hale-Cusanelli described being fueled by ‘adrenaline, the rush, the fucking purpose.’ He constructed an elaborate vision of total regime change in the United States, which he viewed as necessary to root out entrenched interests—by which he principally meant shrouded Jewish interests puppeteering the media, major corporations, the Democratic Party, Joe Biden, and the government as a whole. He was not sorry; he was not deterred,” prosecutors wrote in its recommendation for sentencing Friday.
Prosecutors also took strong issue with how Hale-Cusanelli defended himself at trial. Before jurors, he admitted to being a history buff. Prosecutors had even unearthed text messages in which Hale-Cusanelli explained the nuances of the 17th Amendment. He answered a query from a friend about what, exactly, a ‘faithless elector” might be.
In the wiretapped conversations secured by prosecutors, Hale-Cusanelli expounded too on the purpose and function of the House and Senate.
When he was on the stand, however, he called himself an “idiot.” He declared that he didn’t even know whether the House and Senate sit inside the Capitol building.
“Further, Hale-Cusanelli testified that he heard President Trump’s command on January 6 to march to the Capitol to cheer on Congress. He was with rioters in the Crypt chanting ‘Stop the Steal.’ Another rioter informed Hale-Cusanelli about a tweet saying that Vice President [Mike] Pence ‘didn’t have the courage’ to overturn the results of the election,” the sentencing memorandum states. “He knew what that meant. Hale-Cusanelli texted a friend on December 14, 2020, explaining that in a case of ‘competing electors… Mike Pence decides who wins.’ In spite of all of this, despite having watched all of the government’s evidence establishing the depth of his knowledge about the United States Congress and the Presidential election process, Hale-Cusanelli testified that he did not know that Congress or the election certification proceeding was inside the Capitol building on January 6.”
He also told jurors that he didn’t know whether he had interfered with a police officer trying to make an arrest.
“Hale-Cusanelli lied, and the jury saw through his lies,” prosecutors wrote.
A 78-month sentence falls right between the recommended guidelines of 70 to 87 months.
The former Army reservist asked for a new trial this June and wants to be acquitted of all charges. Those motions are still pending.