Who's the 'Camp Auschwitz' guy and other alleged Jan. 6 neo-Nazis that Trump pardoned?
WASHINGTON – Robert Keith Packer opted to wear a black hoodie with a large white Nazi SS skull design – and the words “Camp Auschwitz” emblazoned above it – when he joined in the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Underneath that were the words “WORK BRINGS FREEDOM” − an English translation of the slogan emblazoned on the front gates of Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps, “Arbeit macht frei.”
On Monday night, in his first official act as president, Donald Trump pardoned nearly 1,600 people for criminal acts committed in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, including Packer, 59, and some other reputed Nazi supporters.
Hatchet Speed, a naval reserve officer and supporter of the Proud Boys right-wing extremist group at the time, also got his four-year sentence for his role in storming the Capitol wiped out. He had told an undercover FBI agent about his admiration for Adolf Hitler and discussed a plan to ‘wipe out’ American Jews.
In addition, Trump gave clemency to Army reservist Timothy Louis Hale-Cusanelli, who had been sentenced to 48 months in prison for actions related to the Capitol breach, including yelling for the mob to “advance” during the riot before going inside.
Federal prosecutors had described Hale-Cusanelli as a white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer.” He has been pictured sporting a Hitler-style moustache that he reportedly wore to work as a contractor at a U.S. Navy base.
According to The Washington Post, 34 of Hale-Cusanelli's colleagues told naval investigators that he held “extremist or radical views pertaining to the Jewish people, minorities and women.” One officer said Hale-Cusanelli had remarked that “Hitler should have finished the job,” in killing six million Jews during the Holocaust from 1933 to 1945.
Trump on Monday didn’t specify why he gave “full, complete and unconditional” pardons or clemency to each of the 1,500 Jan. 6 rioters, including many who violently attacked police officers with bear spray and weapons. Describing them as “patriots” and “hostages,” he said their prosecutions and imprisonment were a "grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people."
A Trump spokesperson did not return a request for comment.
Packer wore the hoodie 'because I was cold'
Packer and his Auschwitz hoodie went viral on social media during the Jan. 6 riot and in the months and years afterward.
Auschwitz was the largest of the German Nazi concentration camps and "extermination centers" during World War II, according to a museum at the former facility. More than 1.1 million men, women and children were either killed or died due to illness or injury at the camp in occupied Poland.
Sporting a long beard and hair, Packer is seen in one photograph on a cellphone as other people assemble behind him on the steps of the Capitol. The Newport News, Va., resident traveled to the Capitol with his sister, she told the court during his sentencing.
Little else is known about Packer's background, or what his political beliefs are.
When FBI agents asked him why he wore the hoodie, he reportedly replied, "Because I was cold," a federal prosecutor said in a court filing cited in an NPR report.
Packer was one of the first people charged by the Justice Department for their roles in Jan. 6. He was arrested eight days later, on Jan. 13, and charged with knowingly and willfully joining and encouraging the crowd who forcibly entered the Capitol “and impeded, disrupted, and disturbed the orderly conduct of business” by Congress as it attempted to confirm Joe Biden’s presidential election victory over Trump.
He was sentenced in September 2022 to 75 days of imprisonment. Prosecutors also sought three years probation.
An 'incredibly offensive' message
Packer, 57 at the time, declined to address U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols before his sentencing via video conference. But the judge noted the "incredibly offensive" message on Packer's sweatshirt before imposing the sentence.
"It seems to me that he wore that sweatshirt for a reason. We don't know what the reason was because Mr. Packer hasn't told us," Nichols said, according to media reports.
Prosecutors later determined that Packer’s hoodie had the word “STAFF” emblazoned on the back – and that he wore an "SS" or "Schutzstaffel" shirt underneath it — a reference to the Nazi Party paramilitary organization founded by Hitler, according to court testimony.
Packer "wanted to support the subversion of our republic and keep a dictatorial ruler in place by force and violence," Assistant U.S. Attorney Mona Furst told the judge, NPR said.
"He posted his belief on his clothing that day,” Furst also said, according to NBC News.
Defense attorney Stephen Brennwald acknowledged that Packer's attire was "seriously offensive" and “just awful” but argued that he shouldn’t be a factor in his sentencing because of his free speech right to wear it, NPR reported.