A man who claimed he had ties to a militia group received a 10-year prison term on May 14 for pouring gasoline over several Supreme Court Police cars and setting them on fire in 2020.
U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth ordered the defendant, Cody Michael Tarner, 26, of Hagerstown, Maryland, to serve 10 years in prison, pay restitution of $32,371.42, and serve three years of supervised release after completing his prison term, the U.S. Department of Justice announced. The defendant had no prior criminal convictions.
Mr. Tarner, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, was at one point in the criminal proceedings found competent to stand trial. He had previously given notice that he intended to present an insanity defense but entered a guilty plea in court on January 9. The maximum sentence for arson is 20 years in prison. A federal grand jury indicted him in September 2020.
The case was investigated by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Supreme Court of the United States Police’s Protective Intelligence Unit, and the Metropolitan Police Department. The prosecutors were Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory V. Cole and Attorney James Peterson.
Government evidence showed that on July 15, 2020, Mr. Tarner drove onto the Supreme Court property at First Street Northeast in Washington and parked his vehicle in a parking spot reserved for court employees. He left his car and walked around the court grounds. He returned to his vehicle and removed a red gasoline can.
He was then seen on security camera footage pouring gasoline onto three unmarked Supreme Court Police vehicles. The three cars were identified as a 2016 Ford Interceptor, a 2017 Ford Expedition, and a 2012 Ford Econoline. The unmarked police vehicles had emergency police lights visible from the outside and one vehicle had emergency police lights mounted on its roof.
Some of the fuel found its way onto his clothing and when he ignited the liquid, there was a “violent ignition of the gasoline,” according to the government. By lighting the 87-octane unleaded gasoline he had purchased in Pennsylvania, he set himself on fire and suffered severe burns to about 40 percent of his body. The fire caused significant damage to two police vehicles, one of which was deemed a total loss.
Neither the Supreme Court nor Congress, which meets across the street, were sitting when the incident took place, but people in the U.S. Capitol complex heard a loud bang.
According to a statement of offense signed by Mr. Tarner, the government’s investigation revealed that he “had several encounters with law enforcement in which he has expressed what can be referred to as anti-government and militia extremist ideologies. Tarner has claimed to be the leader of a particular identified militia group. Tarner has told multiple local and federal law enforcement agencies that he was the leader of the group and has created an online Facebook group page named after the identified militia group.”
The court document did not, however, identify the militia group.
During court appearances, Mr. Tarner accused the government of conspiring against him to deprive him of his rights, and of mischaracterizing his political beliefs.
For example, in a statement to Judge Lamberth, the defendant said on Oct. 2, 2023, that “the government believes its own lies against me, it has deceived itself into a false sense of security where it carelessly and continuously drops the feathers of its own ruin.”
The government has “written many names on this false effigy of me,” including “Dark Brandon” and “Defund the Police,” as if he were “the living personification of an entire movement that they profane in order to put words in my mouth.”
Dark Brandon is an internet meme that supporters of President Joe Biden use to celebrate the president’s policy victories.
“If I wanted to dismantle the police, then I would have said, I would say disband the police, not defund them. They don’t understand the first thing about me, my various movements or my end game,” Mr. Tarner said, according to an official court transcript.
The government is engaged in a “draconian campaign of coercion to hole and corner the American people and maintain its dystopian anocracy through polished deceit,” he added. Political scientists say an anocracy is a state whose government is a mixture of democracy and autocracy.
When he was held in pretrial detention, Mr. Tarner sought release from federal custody, arguing that the government violated procedures and timelines laid out in the Insanity Defense Reform Act (IDRA). The federal statute was signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 in response to public concern after John Hinckley Jr. was acquitted by reason of insanity for attempting to assassinate the president weeks after he was inaugurated in 1981. The objective of the legislation was to make it more difficult for criminal defendants to secure a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.
On Nov. 29, 2023, Judge Lamberth dismissed the motion as moot because the defendant had “already been evaluated, restored to competency, and released from competency-related commitment under IDRA[.]”
Although no Supreme Court personnel or justices were injured in the attack, threats against justices have escalated in recent years.
In 2022, after a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked to the media, Nicholas John Roske allegedly attempted to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh at his Maryland home. Weeks later, Mikeal Deshawn Archambault was arrested for allegedly threatening on social media to “kill everyone” at the Supreme Court with an AK-47 rifle.
It is unclear if Mr. Tarner will appeal the sentence imposed on him.
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to the Justice Department and to Mr. Tarner’s attorneys of record–Alvin H. Thomas Jr. of Fort Washington, Maryland, and Federal Public Defenders Alexis Morgan Gardner and Elizabeth Ann Mullin–but had not received any replies at the time of publication.
