A Texas man charged in the Capitol riot was sentenced to 14 months of incarceration Thursday after pleading guilty to a felony count of making an interstate threat based on social media posts from his Washington hotel room on Jan. 6 and 7.

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       Troy Smocks, 59, was the second person charged to be sentenced among the 15 felony defendants who have pleaded guilty in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.

       Smocks, of Dallas, admitted posting a message on Parler as ‘ColonelTPerez’ the day after the riot that was viewed at least 54,000 times, stating: “Prepare our weapons, and then go get’em. Lets hunt these cowards down like the Traitors that each of them are. This includes RINOS, Dems, and Tech Execs. We now have the green light.”

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       U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of Washington rejected the request by prosecutors and Smocks’s attorney for a time-served sentence at the low end of eight to 14 months recommended by federal guidelines, and dismissed his claim that he was treated more harshly because of his race.

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       “I have not seen a scintilla of evidence that prosecutors’ decisions have been racially motivated,” Chutkan told Smocks, both of whom are Black.

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       “You come here and try to make yourself out as a victim of racism and again, I find that offensive,” the judge said. She said riot defendants were treated based on their conduct, and rejected some supporters’ comparisons likening their actions to those of racial justice protesters after George Floyd was killed last year by a Minneapolis police officer.

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       “People protesting largely peacefully for the civil rights of a murdered, unarmed man is not the same as an attempt to violently disrupt the operations of Congress. Those two are not the same, and that’s a false equivalency,” Chutkan said.

       The judge, a former public defender, said she believed “every individual is capable of change and growth, but I’m not optimistic in your case.”

       She cited Smocks’s history of 17 convictions beginning when he was 18, many of them involving deception or fraud and the impersonation of the military or police, and what she called his apparent lack of remorse.