January 6th Defendant Mark Aungst died awaiting sentencing on July 20th, with the death being ruled a suicide by the coroner
By late June, roughly 840 patriots had been arrested for demonstrating at the Capitol on January 6th. Over 300 of these individuals had been brow-beaten into pleading guilty to crimes as heinous as trespassing at our sacred temple of Democracy, with 80 of those receiving jail time. Many arrested and charged with crimes are still rotting in prison under inhumane conditions.
One of these individuals, Pennsylvania man Mark Aungst, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for which he faced up to $5,000 in fines and six months in prison and died on July 20th while awaiting sentencing.
Marking the third suicide by a January 6th defendant, Mark Aungst’s death was ruled as such by a coroner.
Aungst, 47, is survived by his mother, daughter, and three siblings.
He and a companion, Tammy Bronsburg, were tried for entering the Capitol and faced charges of parading or demonstrating inside a restricted building, disorderly conduct in a restricted building, entering or remaining in a restricted building, and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building. Upon a guilty plea to the first of these “crimes,” the other three charges were to go away during sentencing. However, this still left Aungst’s life ruined as he faced up to $5,000 in fines, six months in jail, and almost certainly no way of being employed again.
The extreme mistreatment in custody of January 6th defendants, coupled with the harsh sentencing for crimes that should not even be crimes, has forced several defendants to take their own lives.
This is not about any semblance of justice or security, but instead a petty crusade by the establishment and the Democrats.
The January 6th defendants are “used as pawns to dangle in front of [Americans] to show that if you cross a certain line, if you support a certain president—as in President Donald Trump—or if you dare to speak up against the government or … against an election being stolen, you’re going to be used,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said during a speech.
She was absolutely correct.
