Former NSA employee sentenced to jail on Jan. 6 charge

A former National Security Agency (NSA) employee was sentenced Wednesday to two weeks in jail over his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. 

Paul Lovley pleaded guilty in January to parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, a misdemeanor with a six-month maximum sentence. The Justice Department had requested a 30-day sentence. He was also given three years of probation, with his two-week jail term to be served over weekends.

Lovley was an information technology consultant for the NSA before Jan. 6. 

He was charged alongside four other men who were described as members of the America First movement, led by white supremacist internet personality Nick Fuentes. Fuentes’s supporters call themselves “Groypers,” named for an internet meme based on Pepe the Frog which became associated with their white supremacist views.

Fuentes notably ate dinner with former President Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club last November, and was briefly a staffer on Kanye West’s presidential campaign.

“Groypers believe they are defending against the demographic and cultural changes that are destroying the ‘true America,’ a white, Christian nation,” prosecutor Joseph Huynh wrote in a court filing. “Groypers attempt to normalize their ideology by aligning themselves with ‘Christianity’ and ‘traditional’ values, such as marriage and family.”

The five men gathered at Lovley’s Maryland home before traveling to Washington together on the day of the insurrection.

Capitol video footage showed the five men entering then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) office, according to Justice Department documents. Lovley was identified by phone records.

In a letter to the judge, Lovley was remorseful.

“I am certain that I would not have even shown up if I had known that the day was going to turn into what it did beforehand,” he wrote.

Three of the four other men — Thomas Carey, Jon Lizak, and Gabriel Chase — pleaded guilty to the same parading charge. The charges of the other man, Thomas Brody, have not been resolved.

Carey received the same 14-day sentence with three years of probation. Lizak and Chase are scheduled to be sentenced later this year.