Nevada locksmith draws prison time for Jan. 6 riot offenses

by Jeff Lehr, Joplin Globe reporter
A federal judge sentenced a Nevada, Missouri, man Friday to a year in prison for his role in the Jan. 6 riot two years ago at the nation’s Capitol.
Judge Royce Lamberth assessed Isaac S. Yoder, 34, concurrent sentences of 12 months each for entering and remaining in a restricted building, and disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building, and six months each for violent entry and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.
Lamberth had found Yoder guilty of all four misdemeanor counts at a bench trial in March in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Yoder will be required to serve a year of supervised released once he has completed his time in the Bureau of Prisons. He also must pay a $1,000 fine, $500 in restitution and a total of $70 in special assessments ordered by the court.
The owner of a lock and key business in Nevada traveled to Washington, D.C., with family members to attend the rally Jan. 6, 2021, in support of then-President Donald Trump after Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 general election.
Yoder attended wearing colonial attire in the style of George Washington — replete with tricorn hat, overcoat, cravat, pants and boots. It was a costume he had worn previously in advertising for his business and at a rally in Jefferson City protesting the state’s stay-at-home order early on in the COVID-19 pandemic. The outfit included an American flag on a pole and a scabbard sheathing a metal sword.
While he did not actually enter the secured area for the rally with his family, instead choosing to stop by the Washington Monument, he saw the crowd moving toward the Capitol after Trump’s speech and rejoined family members long enough to learn that they were distressed by an altercation beginning to take place between police and rally participants.
Family members, who had been struck by rubber bullets and exposed to pepper spray, informed him that the rally had taken a “bad” turn because (Vice President Mike) “Pence folded.”
Yoder testified at trial that many in the crowd were retreating as he neared the Capitol, walked around barricades the insurgents had knocked down and climbed some scaffolding onto the West Front of the building. He entered the building through the Senate Wing door and remained inside about 20 minutes.
Although he claimed not to have seen any police and rioters fighting and that police had matters under control by the time he got there, the judge did not find those claims credible and pointed out that he had walked past broken glass at the door he entered, would have most certainly smelled pepper spray and heard the loud beeping noise that the breached door was making.
The judge also cited his actions once he got inside: climbing to the top of a pile of broken furniture and yelling: “We’ve been so weak! We’ve lost any kind of credibility because all we ever do is cave! We don’t riot. We don’t do bad things. We keep the law!”
“Yoder’s words and actions on Jan. 6, 2021, and after make plain that his intent was to protest and disrupt congressional proceedings around the certification of the 2020 presidential election,” the judge wrote in his ruling.
Charges were brought against 716 people in the first year after the riot, with 391 charged with felonies and 325 with misdemeanors, including Yoder.
More than 500 of those have either been found guilty or pleaded guilty, with just one defendant acquitted and the Department of Justice having racked up a 99.4% conviction rate as of June 12, according to a report from the Center for Policy and Research at Seton Hall University.
That report stated that 81% of the rioters charged were men, 92% were white, 22% had prior criminal records, and 18.5% had backgrounds in the military or law enforcement.