Left: Justice Department court records show Jan. 6 rioter Clifford “Cliff” Mackrell, circled in green, grabbing at an officer’s mask at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021./Right: A still image of Mackrell captured by the FBI contained in court records.
An Ohio man who violently assaulted police on Jan. 6, including two officers who testified before the congressional committee investigating the Capitol attack about their brutalizing near-death experiences that day, has been sentenced by a federal judge to 27 months, or a little over two years, in prison.
Clifford “Cliff” Mackrell, 23, received his sentence in a federal district court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, nearly two years to the day when police first arrested him.
“You were not an innocent bystander … You joined the assault of law enforcement officers … You are here because of your violent actions … Participating in an insurrection is not a way to protest, ” U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly told Mackrell on Tuesday, CBS News reported.
Mackrell issued a letter of apology to the court before he was sentenced.
“I am filled with remorse and regret causing harm to law enforcement officers,” he wrote. “I want to make it clear that my actions were inexcusable and completely contrary to the values of respect, civility, and lawfulness that I strive to uphold as a member of society.
Both he and his father, Michael Mackrell, came to the Capitol on Jan. 6 and were eventually charged together in a superseding indictment last March. Facing six charges, the men struck a plea deal with federal prosecutors on the assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers charge. Clifford’s father, who “tackled” five officers on Jan. 6, pleaded guilty in October 2023, according to a statement from the Justice Department. He awaits sentencing.
Mackrell was just 19 years old when he and his father left their Wellington, Ohio, home on the morning of Jan. 6, gas mask in tow, his post-plea agreement statement of offense notes.
Prosecutors said Clifford Mackrell pushed back barricades with other rioters, forcing police to abandon their lines and retreat closer to the Capitol to form new ones and “at one point, the defendant helped push a piece of what appeared to be plywood into a line of officers.”
When the plywood came clattering down, it was Mackrell’s father who pushed an officer to the ground while he confronted another.
Court records also showed Mackrell was chatty about what he had done at the Capitol a day after the rioting. In one message on Facebook dated Jan. 7, he pondered what would have happened if people had weapons, though several did that day, including firearms and makeshift weapons alike.
A statement of facts from the FBI shows a transcript of messages Clifford Mackrell sent on Facebook on Jan. 7, 2021.
One of the officers Clifford Mackrell attacked that day was Metropolitan Police Department Officer Daniel Hodges. The officer testified to the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol and notably, he also testified in Colorado as voters there tried — and recently failed — to disqualify Donald Trump from the ballot under the Constitution’s insurrection clause.
He wrote to the court ahead of sentencing about what Mackrell had done to him.
Hodges was holding the west terrace of the Capitol “against the forces brought to bear against the country by Donald Trump” and after attending the crowd at the Ellipse, he returned to the Capitol because he had to stop the mob from getting to people the elected officials inside, he wrote.
But once there, Hodges said the “insurrectionists broke through.”
“The terrace broke into dozen of pitched battles with insurgents outnumbering the police at least 50 to 1,” Hodges wrote in his impact statement to the court ahead of sentencing.
It was Mackrell and another man who pushed and grabbed at him and then Mackrell “grabbed my baton with his right hand to occupy my efforts, and then with his left reached underneath my protective visor to violently grab my face, blinding me and causing pain,” Hodges said.
“While I was stunned, Clifford switched his stance, grabbing my face with his right hand, and digging into my right eye with his thumb. He simultaneously wrapped his left arm around my neck, pushing my head forward toward his thumb as he attempted to dig into my skull.”
If this were allowed to persist, Mackrell was bound to use “his full weight” to press into his orbital socket and crush his eye — and worse, proceed to damage his optic nerve or his brain.
Visceral footage of Mackrell’s relentlessness against Hodges has permeated the record of attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6. Yet, Hodges noted to the judge, that while he couldn’t perceive it in the chaotic moment on Jan. 6, something had since became clear:
You can see Clifford enduring attacks from my fellow officers who were attempting to free me from his assault. This shows how he knew how effective his attack was and how determined he was to make me out of the fight, one way or the other.
The west terrace was “dominated by domestic terrorists,” Hodges added.
Justice Department court records show Clifford Mackrell, circled in green, pushing against officers at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Mackrell also assaulted U.S. Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell. He too testified before the select committee and has been outspoken about the long-term damage rioters inflicted on him physically and professionally. The injuries Gonell sustained at the Capitol forced him into early medical retirement. Besides Mackrell, Gonell was also assaulted by Jan. 6 rioter Kyle Fitzsimons, as Law&Crime previously reported. Fitzsimons was carrying an unstrung bow and wore a fur pelt and butcher’s jacket with his name etched on his lapel when he assaulted the now-retired sergeant and U.S. military veteran.
That’s how Gonell said he was able to identify him. That was the man, court records show Gonell told the court, who tried to drag him into the crowd while he assaulting him and four other officers in the span of five minutes, prosecutors said.
Patrick McCaughey of Connecticut also assaulted Hodges, crushing him in a metal door frame with a riot shield as he screamed at him to “go home.” McCaughey was sentenced to six years in prison last April.
Metropolitan Police Department Officer Daniel Hodges is seen being crushed in a door at the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021. (via FBI court filing)
Clifford Mackrell will be subject to three years of supervised released after he serves his time in prison. The court also ordered him to pay a $2,000 fine.
According to an update from the Justice Department as of Wednesday, approximately 486 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees and a total of 95 people have pleaded guilty to felonies involving federal assault charges of law enforcement officers.
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