Suburban Chicago man gets 3 years in prison for saying Trump, others ‘should all be executed’

A federal judge Wednesday sentenced a Winthrop Harbor man to more than three years in prison for threatening President Donald Trump and others, saying she found it “rich” that prosecutors sought an even stiffer sentence after Trump pardoned scores of Jan. 6 rioters.The sentencing of Trent Schneider, 58, comes more than three months after a jury found him guilty of making a threat with a video he posted online last fall. In the video, he railed against people he thought had done him wrong and ultimately dropped the president’s name.Federal prosecutors originally sought a five-year prison sentence for Schneider. Assistant U.S. Attorney Hanna Helwig lowered that request to four years during Schneider’s two-day sentencing hearing.Still, U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman said she was bothered by the feds’ original recommendation.“We have a ton of people — hundreds that have been pardoned — who, you know, tried to execute threats and harm to people who were law enforcement and government officials at the House of Representatives at the Capitol, and they all got pardoned,” Coleman said Wednesday.“That is the irony of this whole situation,” she added, “and gets this court extremely upset.” Related ‘Huge Trump supporter’ from Lake County convicted of threatening Trump For his part, Schneider told the judge he’d been the victim of “conscience shocking” government misconduct. He said “it’s mind blowing” that he’s already been held in custody for eight months. He pretended to yawn Wednesday while the judge handed down the sentence.Because of an ongoing scandal at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse over alleged prosecutor misconduct during grand jury proceedings, Coleman reviewed grand jury transcripts from Schneider’s case ahead of his sentencing. She asked Helwig to clarify one remark — apparently made as Helwig struggled with tech issues — but identified no wrongdoing.Schneider’s threat came against the backdrop...