A Missouri man who rammed a rented truck into a gate near the White House with aspirations of overthrowing the government was sentenced to eight years in prison Thursday, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sai Varshith Kandula, 20, of St. Louis, pleaded guilty\u2002<\/a>in<\/a>\u2002May<\/a> to one count of willful injury or depredation of property of the United States in the incident on May 22, 2023. Prosecutors agreed to seek only an eight-year sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for Washington said his goal was \u201cto overthrow the democratically elected government of the United States in order to replace it with a dictatorship fueled by Nazi ideology.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It was less a ‘plan’ than an assemblage of delusional thoughts stitched together by a common thread,” Kandula’s attorney wrote in a sentencing memorandum. After he was arrested, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, the attorney wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kandula, an Indian national who was a lawful permanent U.S. resident with a green card at the time, crashed a U-Haul truck into the gate at the intersection of H Street NW and 16th Street NW around 9:35 p.m., the prosecutor’s office said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The truck became disabled, and Kandula got out and pulled a flag with a Nazi swastika on it from his backpack before he was arrested, it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No one was injured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prosecutors wrote in their own memorandum that Kandula nearly struck two pedestrians and that an eight-year sentence was warranted because of the seriousness of his actions and for deterrence purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kandula’s attorney wrote in the sentencing memo that he will most likely be deported because of the conviction and that he will return to India to live with family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n