'Unquestionably cruel': Judge urged to give 6-year sentence to one of 'most violent' Jan 6 rioters

A man who was dubbed "one of the most violent rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6" should get six years in prison when he's sentenced next week, prosecutors urged the judge overseeing the case.

When then-D.C. Police Officer Michael Fanone was dragged down Capitol steps into a mob of rioters who then tased and beat him with flagpoles, Thomas Sibick took Fanone's badge and radio, prosecutors say.

"Sibick was one of those rioters who not only witnessed the assault on Officer Fanone at close range but joined in by depriving him of at least one item he could have used to defend himself: his police radio," Assistant U.S. Attorney Kimberly L. Paschall said, according to a report from The Buffalo News.

"Sibick was in the thick of that violence, working his way to the front of the mob to personally and forcefully contribute to it," Paschall said in her court filing.

She called his actions "unquestionably cruel."

"The fact that Sibick was willing to lie, on multiple occasions, to federal agents in the midst of one of the largest investigations in our nation’s history should cause grave concern," she said.

Sibick, 37, pleaded guilty in March to assaulting Fanone and stealing his badge and radio. He admitted to two counts of theft and a single count of assaulting, resisting or impeding an officer.