WASHINGTON — A former California police chief who spread conspiracy theories about Jan. 6 was sentenced to 135 months in federal prison on Thursday for his participation in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Alan Hostetter was found guilty in July after he represented himself at a bench trial. Hostetter, who was the chief of the La Habra, California, Police Department in 2010, was charged in July 2021.

Hostetter, like GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and many far-right members of Congress, has spread conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 attack. Ramaswamy said, without evidence, during the Republican debate on Wednesday night that Jan. 6 “now does look like it was an inside job,” while Hostetter said during his trial that he believed “that the entire thing was staged.”

Hostetter, who was found to have carried a hatchet during the attack, also founded a group called the American Phoenix Project, that protested Covid restrictions and denied the 2020 election results. He recorded a video after Donald Trump lost the election in which he said that “traitors need to be executed” and promoted Jan. 6 as the final day when patriots could make their stand.

“Some people, at the highest levels, need to be made an example of: an execution or two or three,” Hostetter said in a video he filmed in November 2020. “Tyrants and traitors need to be executed as an example so nobody pulls this s— again.”

Federal prosecutors had sought more than 12.5 years in federal prison, saying Hostetter conspired, collected weapons and traveled to D.C. with the plan of using the threat of violence to stop the peaceful transfer of power.

“Choke that city off, fill it with patriots, and then those people behind the walls of the Senate and the House are gonna be listening to us chanting outside those walls,” Hostetter said in a speech ahead of the attack that was cited by prosecutors. “And they’re gonna realize, we have one choice. We either fix this mess and keep America America, or we become traitors, and those five million people outside the walls are gonna drag us out by our hair and tie us to a fucking lamppost. That’s their option.”

Hostetter’s trial featured testimony from co-defendant Russell Taylor, who pleaded guilty as part of a plea deal with the government. Their four co-defendants — Erik Scott Warner, Felipe Antonio Martinez, Derek Kinnison, and Ronald Mele — were all found guilty of felony obstruction of an official proceeding and other charges following a bench trial last month.