An Orange County man who admitted to stealing a “Do Not Enter” sign from the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 Insurrection was sentenced Thursday to 30 days in jail.
Philip Edward Kramer, who is identified in court records as a Yorba Linda resident and former truck driver, was also sentenced to 100 hours of community service and ordered to pay a $2,500 fine and $500 in restitution, federal court records show.
Under his plea agreement, Kramer, 62, had faced up to six months behind bars for a misdemeanor count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in the Capitol Building. More serious charges he was initially facing – including violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds and theft of government property – were dismissed following his guilty plea late last year.
On Jan. 6, 2021, thousands of pro-Trump supporters flooded the U.S. Capitol in what turned into a violent but ultimately failed attempt to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s electoral victory. Since then, an unprecedented federal investigation has led to the arrests of more than 800 people nationwide in connection to the Jan. 6 Insurrection, including more than two-dozen people with ties to Southern California.
According to a sentencing brief filed by federal prosecutors, Kramer traveled to Washington D.C. expecting violence, outfitting himself with a helmet and a strap with a master lock attached to it.
Outside the Capitol building, Kramer saw a two-foot long “Do Not Enter” sign and decided to steal it as a “souvenir,” prosecutors wrote. He then used his phone to film a crowed of people physically confronting police officers, entered the Capitol building and eventually left when officers began spraying the crowd with pepper-spray, prosecutors added.
The FBI received an anonymous about Kramer after he allegedly bragged to co-workers about being involved in the Capitol riot. He later told agents that he brought the “Do Not Enter” sign back to California, but later threw it away after becoming “scared of what could happen if he were found with it,” according to prosecutors.
See also: List: These Southern California residents are accused of taking part in the Capitol riot
According to the sentencing brief, Kramer during multiple meetings with the FBI “expressed his regret for going to Washington D.C., stealing the sign and entering the Capitol.” Kramer in a brief phone interview with a Register reporter after he was indicted in May 2021 said he “did nothing wrong,” and explained he had traveled to the Capitol “for the right reasons, not the wrong reasons.”
Kramer’s attorneys, in their own sentencing brief to the court, described him as a life-long Orange County resident and family man who lived a law-abiding life and who made “a mistake he will regret for the rest of his life.” The defense attorney wrote that Kramer did not take part in any violent or destructive conduct, adding that he has accepted responsibility for what he did.
Kramer is among more than 275 defendants so far who have pleaded guilty to federal charges in connection to the Jan. 6 Insurrection and the more than 165 who have been sentenced. Like Kramer, the majority of those people have accepted plea deals admitting to misdemeanor charges that amount to trespassing at the Capitol building or the adjacent restricted grounds, and most have received or face either short stints behind bars or probation.
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