DOJ seeks 11 years in prison for Jan. 6 Speaker’s Lobby rioter Zachary Alam
Alam smashed windows in the Speaker’s Lobby
entrance where Ashli Babbitt was fatally shot and later told protesters leaving the Capitol: ‘We need guns.’
By Joseph M. Hanneman The Epoch Times || May 1, 2024
The Department of Justice is seeking more than 11 years in prison for Zachary Jordan Alam, the rioter who created “one of the most fraught and dangerous moments” of Jan. 6 just before Ashli Babbitt was fatally shot by Capitol Police.
Alam, 32, of Centreville, Virginia, faces a May 6 sentencing hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich for seven felony and three misdemeanor charges stemming from his time at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Prosecutors asked for a 136-month prison term, a six-level upward departure from federal sentencing guidelines.
Defense attorney Steven Metcalf II called the DOJ’s recommended 11.33-year prison term “extremely excessive,” arguing instead for no more than 4.75 years behind bars.
“Alam’s actions that day directly and substantially created a situation where officers were compelled to engage in lethal force, for the first and only time that day, to protect the lives of their protecteees [sic],” prosecutors Joseph Smith Jr. and Rebekah Lederer wrote in their 54-page sentencing memorandum.
The DOJ document does not mention Babbitt by name; instead, it refers to her as “another rioter.” It does not detail Babbitt’s attempts to stop Alam’s violence and vandalism that culminated in a left hook she delivered to his nose just before she was shot by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd.
The sentencing document focuses primarily on Alam’s behavior in a raucous crowd just outside the Speaker’s Lobby near the House Chamber.
‘It’s insane, bro. We’ve got to f***ing revolutionize the entire world right now.’
“Alam intentionally put himself at the front of the mob, where he threatened the USCP officers, yelling, ‘I’m going to f**k you up!’ in their faces,” the document read.
“Alam pushed against the officers, creating an opening so he could punch the glass panes of the doors. Alam’s punches landed near the heads and faces of the officers, shattering three door window panes.”
Shortly after Babbitt shouted at three Capitol Police officers guarding the doors to “call f***ing help,” Alam pushed his way to the front of the crowd and began a loud tirade against the police, video shot by Sam Montoya of Infowars showed.
“All said, in the course of just 25 seconds, Alam violently kicked the doors three times, then smashed the doors and glass panes with the helmet an additional nine times, breaking two glass panes completely out,” the DOJ memo said. “All the while, Alam’s actions exacerbated the chaos, inflaming the mob overall.”
guilty verdicts
Alam was found guilty in a jury trial on Sept. 12, 2023, of 10 charges: assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers, obstructing officers during a civil disorder, destruction of government property, obstruction of an official proceeding, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, act of physical violence in a Capitol building, and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.
Alam was arrested by the FBI on Jan. 30, 2021, in Denver, Pennsylvania, after weeks on the run. His mother, Karyn Alam, identified him to the FBI based on photos from the U.S. Capitol.
According to court records, Alam entered the U.S. Capitol at 2:17 p.m. through a broken window near the Senate Wing Door. Security video showed him changing his shirt in the Crypt. He wore a floppy-ear Canada Goose cap that helped make him one of the most recognized figures of Jan. 6.
He emerged from behind a police line in the Will Rogers Corridor and began shouting at police and other protesters. According to video shot by Jan. 6 provocateur John Sullivan, an older man became so annoyed at Alam’s caterwauling that he slapped him on the side of the head and shouted, “Shut up!”
After the crowd advanced to the main House door, Alam approached journalist Tayler Hansen, put his arm around him, and said, “It’s insane, bro. We’ve got to f***ing revolutionize the entire world right now,” according to Hansen’s video obtained by The Epoch Times.
‘Zachary had turned to alcohol and drug use and associated with people who were negative influences.’
In the hallway outside the entrance to the Speaker’s Lobby, Alam shouted at police and became violent, video evidence showed. He used his right fist to punch at the doorway, inches from the left side of Capitol Police Officer Christopher Lanciano’s face, the video showed. He also punched at the glass between Officer Kyle Yetter and Sgt. Timothy Lively.
The DOJ memo mistakenly refers to the officers as being from the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department. Yetter, Lively, and Lanciano worked for U.S. Capitol Police on Jan. 6.
violence erupts
After Yetter, Lively, and Lanciano abandoned their post at the Speaker’s Lobby doors, Alam kicked the double doors several times and was joined in the attack by several others. He was handed a black helmet by rioter Christopher Grider that he used to smash several of the windows, video showed.
According to the Architect of the Capitol, it cost $3,044 to repair Jan. 6 damage to the Speaker’s Lobby entrance.
The DOJ memo does not mention that after Alam smashed out the glass in the right side panel of the entrance, Babbitt grabbed his backpack, spun him around and punched him in the nose with her left hand, knocking off his glasses. She then climbed into the side panel window and was shot at 2:44 p.m. She was pronounced dead 30 minutes later.
Video shows Alam jumping back in shock when he saw Babbitt fall to the floor after she was shot by Byrd. He then raced down the nearby set of stairs and was seen on video with his head in his hands.
On his way out of the Capitol after the shooting, Alam appeared to get into a verbal confrontation with someone just before 2:50 p.m., newly released Capitol Police security video shows.
“As he left the Capitol building, another rioter recorded him stating, ‘We need guns, bro… we need guns,’” the DOJ said in its sentencing memo. It’s not clear if Alam spoke the words to the man shown confronting him on the security video.
When he was arrested on Jan. 30, 2021, police seized Alam’s journals, “which not only recorded his reflections of January 6 but also memorialized his plans to flee and conceal his identity, including journal entries about his plans to set up new bank accounts and use a ‘burner’ phone to conceal his identity and location from law enforcement,” prosecutors wrote.
‘Alam just wanted to fit somewhere because he has been rejected by everyone else in his life.’
Alam “wrote of his actions as ‘patriotic’ and alluded to plans to make a video in which he would ‘certify [his] American-ness,’ [and] explain ‘why I did what I did.’”
In its sentencing memo, the defense said Alam struggled to find his place in the world after dropping out of medical school in 2014 and experiencing his parents’ divorce in 2015.
“His father could not accept that Zachary would not become a doctor and stated that he ‘disowned’ Zachary,” Alam’s mother, Karyn Alam, wrote in a letter to Judge Friedrich.
“He attempted numerous jobs, such as selling health products, unloading trucks, working at a vitamin store, being a personal trainer, driving a bike taxi, and bussing tables,” Karyn Alam wrote. “I gave Zachary emotional and moral support to the best of my ability, but his father’s rejection continued.
“Zachary had turned to alcohol and drug use and associated with people who were negative influences; he began committing misdemeanor crimes to survive,” she said.
On Jan. 8, 2021, Karyn Alam said she received a text from her ex-husband showing a man breaking windows near the House of Representatives on Jan. 6. It looked like their son.
mother calls fbi
“Identifying my son to the FBI was the most difficult, heart-breaking decision I have ever made,” she wrote, “but I felt it was the right thing to do.”
Metcalf asked the judge to consider Alam’s pre-Jan. 6 difficulties, stating that his client for a time was homeless, living out of a Virginia storage unit, and visiting a local gym to shower.
“He is a loner, one who went to the Capitol on his own and acted at times in a manner he may have believed others wanted him to act,” Metcalf wrote. “Alam wanted to fit in, it did not matter with whom, Alam just wanted to fit somewhere because he has been rejected by everyone else in his life.” •