Ex-Virginia police officer pleads guilty in connection with US Capitol riot

A former Virginia police officer pleaded guilty on Friday to storming the U.S. Capitol with another former officer who is scheduled to be tried next month on charges related to the riot.

Former Rocky Mount, Virginia, police officer Jacob Fracker, who was fired by the town after his arrest, has agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors, his attorney said. A date for his sentencing wasn’t immediately set.

Fracker pleaded guilty to conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, the joint session of Congress that convened on Jan. 6, 2021, to certify President Joe Biden’s electoral victory. The felony charge is punishable by a maximum prison sentence of five years.

Fracker’s co-defendant, Thomas Robertson, has a trial scheduled to start on April 4. The town of Rocky Mount also fired Robertson after the Capitol siege.

Jacob Fracker (left) and Thomas Robertson (right) inside the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021

Fracker and Robertson were off duty when they drove with a neighbor to Washington, D.C., on the morning of Jan. 6. Fracker’s indictment says Robertson brought three gas masks for them to use.

After listening to speeches near the Washington Monument, Fracker, Robertson and the neighbor identified only as "Person A" walked toward the Capitol, donned the gas masks and joined the growing mob, according to the indictment. Robertson was carrying a large wooden stick and used it to impede Metropolitan Police Department officers who arrived to help Capitol police officers hold off the mob, the indictment says.

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Fracker and Robertson posed for a photograph inside the Capitol during the attack and later posted about the riot on social media. Robertson was photographed making an obscene gesture in front of a statute of John Stark in the Capitol’s crypt, prosecutors said.

Fracker and Robertson had sworn to uphold the law, even in "the face of volatile and challenging circumstances," prosecutors wrote in a court filing.

"They broke this public trust when they participated in the riot at the U.S. Capitol," they added.

Before the riot, Robertson posted on Facebook about his belief that the 2020 presidential election was illegitimate and referenced an "open armed rebellion" and "insurgency," according to Fracker’s indictment.

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"A legitimate republic stands on 4 boxes. The soapbox, the ballot box, the jury box, and then the cartridge box. We just moved to step 3. Step 4 will not be pretty," he wrote on Nov. 7, 2021.

Robertson’s attorneys didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Friday.

Robertson has been jailed since U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled in July that he violated terms of his pretrial release by possessing firearms. The judge rejected Robertson’s suggestion that 34 guns he ordered before June 29, when FBI agents searched his home, are simply World War II collectables.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.