A federal judge on Thursday sentenced two former far-right Proud Boy leaders to prison terms of 17 and 15 years after a jury convicted them of seditious conspiracy for storming the US Capitol in a failed attempt to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss.
Joseph Biggs, who helped lead dozens of Proud Boys members and associates in marching to the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, was sentenced to 17 years.
Prosecutors had sought a 33-year sentence.
Biggs and other Proud Boys joined the mob that broke through police lines and forced lawmakers to flee, disrupting the joint session of Congress for certifying the electoral victory by Joe Biden.
“I know that I messed up that day,” Biggs told the judge just before being sentenced, “but I’m not a terrorist.”
Later Thursday the judge who sentenced Biggs also sentenced co-defendant former Proud Boys chapter leader Zachary Rehl to 15 years in prison.
Two other Proud Boys will also be sentenced after they were convicted by a jury in May after a four-month trial in Washington, that laid bare far-right extremists’ embrace of lies by Trump that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Enrique Tarrio, a Miami resident who was the Proud Boys’ national chairman and top leader, is scheduled to be sentenced on Tuesday. His sentencing was moved from Wednesday to next week because the judge, Timothy Kelly, was sick.
He picked Biggs and Proud Boys chapter president Ethan Nordean to be the group’s leaders on the ground in his absence, prosecutors said. Biggs, of Ormond Beach, Florida, was a self-described Proud Boys organizer. He served in the US army for eight years before being medically discharged in 2013. Biggs later worked as a correspondent for Infowars, the website operated by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Biggs, Tarrio, Nordean and Rehl were convicted of charges including seditious conspiracy, a rarely brought civil war-era offense. A fifth Proud Boys member, Dominic Pezzola, was acquitted of seditious conspiracy but was convicted of other serious charges.
Prosecutors also recommended prison sentences of 33 years for Tarrio, 30 years for Rehl, 27 years for Nordean and 20 years for Pezzola. Pezzola and Nordean are scheduled to be sentenced on Friday.
Defense attorneys argued that the justice department was unfairly holding their clients responsible for the violent actions of others in the crowd of Trump supporters at the Capitol.
More than 1,100 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Over 600 of them have been convicted and sentenced.
Source: Elections - theguardian.com
