A former staff sergeant at Fairchild Air Force Base will not spend more time in jail after being indicted as part of a plot, headed by an airman who expressed antigovernment sentiment online, to steal ammunition and an optic sight for a firearm.
Jonah Pierce pleaded guilty in April to a single misdemeanor charge of receipt of stolen government property. He’d received a red dot optic sight for a firearm that he told U.S. District Court Judge Thomas O. Rice had been slated for destruction. Pierce, who was not in custody and appeared in a shirt and tie, asked the judge not to send him to jail for what he said was “part of the culture” at the base and in the military. He believed he could take the defective optic home and “fix it,” he said.
“I am remorsely sorry for what I’ve done,” said Pierce, who noted that he is the only source of income for his wife, a disabled military veteran, and family. He has been separated from the Air Force and had to move off-base after the indictment, according to court records.
Federal prosecutors had asked that Pierce receive a six-month sentence, the same handed down by Rice to Eric Eagleton last month. Eagleton pleaded guilty to a felony charge of possession of stolen ammunition.
“The conduct of the defendant was egregious,” said Patrick Cashman, the assistant U.S. attorney handling the case. “It’s serious. It also hurt the image of the Air Force.”
Bryan Whitaker, Pierce’s attorney, said his client’s role was minimal. Whitaker compared him to a user in a drug case, arguing that Eagleton’s conduct, and that of Thomas Sanger, whose comments initially tipped off the Air Force and the FBI, were more serious. One of the codefendants couldn’t initially remember Pierce’s first name when the group was questioned by authorities in April 2022, Whitaker said.
“That’s not someone who’s involved in the activity of distributing ammunition to others,” Whitaker said.
Rice said his sentence took into account Pierce’s lack of criminal history, as well as his military service, in handing down his sentence of a year of probation, with credit for a day served in jail.
“I don’t feel like I need to give you a lecture,” Rice said. “You know what you did is wrong.”
Pierce wiped away tears after Rice left the bench following sentencing.
Sanger, along with fellow airmen Nathan G. Richards and Austin Limacher, remain scheduled for trial in September on related charges. The FBI and Air Force were initially tipped to the activity, which includes the alleged theft of thousands of rounds of ammunition from the base’s Combat Arms Training Management section, after Sanger posted antigovernment messages on social media.
“They defrauded our election system and are still getting away with it,” Sanger, using an account named “problematicpatriot,” wrote according to investigators. The post was made in December 2020, a few weeks before a group of supporters of then-President Donald Trump violently occupied the U.S. Capitol building.
“That means this system has run (its) course. People have to die,” the post read.
Sanger has pleaded not guilty to his charges and remains in custody.
Shawn Robson, a noncommissioned officer who was in charge of the section from which the ammunition was stolen, pleaded guilty to possession of stolen ammunition and was sentenced to 18 months of probation last month.
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