A Virginia man who wore a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt at the US Capitol during last year’s riot pleads guilty to joining the mob of people who stormed the building.
Photographs of Robert Keith Packer wearing the sweatshirt with the antisemitic message went viral after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
The words “Camp Auschwitz” were above an image of a human skull. Packer’s sweatshirt also bore the phrase “Work Brings Freedom,” a rough translation of the German words above the entrance gate to Auschwitz, the death camp in Poland where Nazis killed more than 1 million men, women and children.
Packer, 57, of Newport News, Virginia, pleads guilty to parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, a misdemeanor that carries a maximum sentence of six months imprisonment. US District Judge Carl Nichols is scheduled to sentence him on April 7.
FBI agents arrested Packer a week after the riot. He remains free pending his sentencing hearing.
Robert Keith Packer seen during the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2020 (L) and in custody in Virginia, January 13, 2013. (Screen capture: Twitter/Western Tidewater Regional Jail)
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