Indian-origin man gets 8 years in jail for attempting to attack White House

Washington:

Indian national Sai Varshit Kandula, 20, was sentenced to eight years in prison on Thursday for attempting to attack the White House in a rented truck on May 22, 2023.

The Justice Department said the attack was aimed at overthrowing the democratically elected US government and replacing it with a dictatorship inspired by Nazi ideology.

Kandula pleaded guilty on May 13, 2024, to a charge of intentionally causing injury or plundering US property. Born in Chandanagar, India, he was a lawful permanent resident of the US with a green card. In addition to the prison sentence, District Court Judge Dabney L. Frederick ordered Kandula to serve three years of supervised release.

According to court documents, the Indian national took a commercial flight from St. Louis, Missouri to Washington DC on the afternoon of May 22, 2023, transited through another airport on a one-way airline ticket and arrived at Dulles International Airport. At 5:20 pm, in which he hired a truck at 6:30 pm.

He stopped for food and gas, and then drove to Washington, DC, where he crashed into the barriers protecting the White House and President’s Park at 9:35 p.m. at the intersection of H Street, Northwest and 16th Street, Northwest. Kandula went onto the sidewalk, causing pedestrians to flee the scene. After hitting the barriers, the truck overturned, then tilted forward and struck the metal barriers a second time. The second impact disabled the truck, which started smoking and leaking fluid from the engine compartment.

After this Kandula got out of the vehicle and went behind the truck. He pulled a flag from his backpack, a three-by-five-foot red and white banner with a Nazi swastika in the middle, and waved it. The Justice Department said that U.S. Park Police and U.S. Secret Service officers arrested Candula at the scene and took him into custody.

According to the plea agreement, at the time Kandula crashed the truck into the White House perimeter, he was attempting to gain access to the White House in order to seize political power.

“Kandula intended to replace the democratically elected government with a dictatorship inspired by the ideology of Nazi Germany and put himself in charge of the United States. Kandula admitted to investigators that he would have arranged for the assassination of the US President and others if necessary to achieve his objective. The purpose of their actions was to influence the conduct of the government through intimidation or pressure.”

According to the Justice Department, their actions caused US$4,322 in damages to the National Park Service. This amount included the cost of repairing the metal bollard barriers to their original condition and ensuring structural soundness, oil and chemical removal, spill cleanup, and disposal of fluids from the crashed U-Haul.

Kandula planned the attack for several weeks. Before renting the truck and crashing it on the White House grounds, he made several attempts to gain access to the vehicles or armed security guards. For example, on April 22, 2023, Kandula requested 25 armed guards and an armored convoy from a security company based in Virginia, federal prosecutors said.

On May 4, 2023, Kandula attempted to contact several other companies in an attempt to rent a large commercial tractor-trailer truck, a dump truck, or some other large truck. Kandula failed to prosecute the security guard or the tractor-trailer truck or dump truck. A media release said that Kandula had attempted to arrange for the services of these security guards and the use of large vehicles to carry out his crimes against the US government.