Jeffrey Sabol Sentenced: Radicalized Coloradan's Brutal, Bizarre January 6 Story

On March 22, Jeffrey Sabol, a 53-year-old from Colorado, was sentenced to more than five years in prison for his actions during the January 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Sabol's prosecution is far from unique: In the 38 months since zealots with a strong love for then-President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol grounds, the U.S. Justice Department estimates that 1,358 people across the U.S. have been charged with crimes related to what a Colorado court characterized as an act of insurrection. That total includes at least 486 individuals accused of assaulting or impeding law enforcement officials, as well as more than a dozen Coloradans targeted by the feds for their activities on that fateful day. Sabol fits into both of these categories.

Still, Sabol's story remains singularly fascinating, in large part given how this seemingly mild-mannered geophysicist and divorced father of three living in the bucolic community of Kittredge was transformed by a steady stream of falsehoods into an obsessed radical fully capable of violence.

The bold strokes of Sabol's tale were first told in "Misinformation and the Jan. 6 Insurrection: When 'Patriot Warriors' Were Fed Lies," an article by Bill McCarthy published in June 2021 by PolitiFact, a nonprofit affiliate of the Poynter Institute that describes itself as "a nonpartisan fact-checking website."

The narrative begins at 4:30 p.m. Monday, January 11, when police responding to an erratic-driving report stopped a Nissan Versa near the border between New York and New Jersey. Inside the vehicle, they found Sabol, 51, who was "covered in blood, with gashes across his arms and thighs," McCarthy writes. They also found razor blades used in what's characterized as a suicide attempt, an airline e-ticket to Switzerland, a teal backpack and a tan Carhartt jacket.

The backpack and jacket were used to identify Sabol as one of the participants in the Capitol invasion (they can be seen clearly in this YouTube video).

What factors propelled Sabol to this particular time and place? There aren't many answers in his background. He was born in Utica, New York, and raised in nearby Waterville, a town with a population under 2,000. His mother was a nurse, his father was a science teacher, and he had two siblings: a brother who worked as an attorney before taking up teaching, and a sister who become an Army colonel, though her original specialty was dentistry.

After graduating from SUNY Cortland, Sabol began his career as a physicist. Among other things, McCarthy reveals, he traveled to military sites around the world to remove unexploded munitions. While in Hawaii, he met Shari Stoltz, whom he later married. They raised their family in Colorado, and Sabol pursued an active lifestyle, playing rugby, camping, climbing, snowboarding and volunteering for a horse-riding organization focused on kids.

Back then, according to letters submitted on Sabol's behalf following his arrest, he seldom talked politics, loved "hippie" music made by the likes of Dead and Company, and once painted over "crude and racial graffiti" near a town creek.

"Never once did I detect any indication of him being a fanatic of any sort," wrote a retired schoolteacher who'd volunteered with Sabol.

But following the 2008 election of President Barack Obama, Sabol's personality began to change, McCarthy suggests. He started writing emails to the White House and affixed a "Don't Tread on Me" sticker to his truck. The process reportedly escalated following his 2011 divorce from Stoltz and the 2014 death of his brother from a heart attack.

During an April 2021 court appearance, Jon Norris, who was then Sabol's attorney, stated that Sabol "himself is not particularly political up until the recent events where the ‘stopping the steal’ became politicized. Now I think he reached a point in his life a few years ago when his eldest brother passed away that was very traumatic for him, and he kind of lost one of the anchors in his life, and he started listening to more politics than he had in the past. And I think that explains why he was motivated enough to come to Washington, D.C."

A Department of Justice news release issued after Sabol's sentencing adds more details from court documents. Sabol is said to have traveled from Colorado to Washington, D.C., in the company of unnamed folks in a "self-described 'neighborhood watch' group." On the advice of one group member, he "packed a helmet, a trauma kit, a Buck knife and zip ties."

After watching Trump speak at the "Stop the Steal" rally at the Ellipse, Sabol marched with a large crowd to the U.S. Capitol, the documents state. He wound up on the West Plaza, and after getting separated from his Colorado crew, he joined a cadre confronting police officers. Over a span of thirty minutes or so, Sabol allegedly got into two notable jousts with cops — slamming into the riot shield of a Metropolitan Police Department officer and grabbing the helmet visor of another — in between a tumble down a set of steps.

But that was mere prelude to an incident that occurred more than two hours after the mob's arrival at the Capitol. An excerpt from the account reads: "At approximately 4:27 p.m., an MPD Officer was positioned toward the opening of the Tunnel when a co-defendant charged at and knocked the officer to the ground. While the officer was lying supine on the ground attempting to defend himself, Sabol reached for the officer's baton, grabbed it, and ripped it out of the officer's hands. Court documents say that Sabol used such force in wresting the baton away from the officer's grasp that the officer's torso was lifted off the ground, and Sabol himself fell backward down the steps of the Lower West Terrace. Sabol then climbed back up the steps, moved towards the Tunnel entrance, and assisted two rioters in dragging a law enforcement officer down the steps and into the mob, where the rioters beat the officer with a flagpole and a baton."

In the aftermath of the attack, Sabol attempted to cover his tracks. The feds say he deleted text messages and other communications from his cell phone and asked a comrade to get rid of a "selfie video" in which Sabol admitted to having been pepper-sprayed when he "tried to rush the front gate, the front door." Additionally, prosecutors found evidence that he'd "destroyed his laptop computers in a microwave oven and dropped his cell phone into a body of water."

Such efforts were for naught. Last August, Sabol was convicted on several counts: obstruction of an official proceeding, aiding and abetting, federal robbery, and assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers with a deadly or dangerous weapon. For these actions, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered him to spend 63 months in prison, to be followed by 36 months of supervised release, and instructed to pay $32,165.65 in restitution.

Click for an update on other Colorado insurrectionists.