Federal prosecutors seek sentences of 27 to 33 years in federal prison in the cases of four Proud Boys convicted of seditious conspiracy for his actions during the attack on the US Capitol.
Enrique Tarrio, Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean and Zachary Rehl were convicted of seditious conspiracy in May after a months-long trial that began in January. A fifth defendant, Dominic Pezzola, was acquitted of the seditious conspiracy charge but found guilty of assaulting, resisting, or hindering certain officers. Pezzola broke a window in the Capitol with a stolen police shield, causing the first breach of the building.
Prosecutors are seeking 33 years in federal prison for Tarrio and Biggs, 30 years for Rehl, 27 years for Nordean and 20 years for Pezzola.
Sentencing hearings are scheduled for the week of August 28, which is also when a federal judge in Washington will set the date for Donald Trump’s election interference trial.
Prosecutors said the Proud Boys were guilty of terrorist offenses and that it was important that their sentences “be noted by those who would encourage such political violence in the future.” The justice system’s response to the violence on January 6, 2021 “will affect whether January 6 becomes an atypical or defining moment,” prosecutors wrote.
“The defendants understood what was at stake and accepted their role in provoking a ‘revolution.’ They unleashed a force on Capitol Hill that was calculated to exert its political will on forcibly elected officials and undo the results of a democratic election. Right-wing foot soldiers aimed to keep their leader in power,” prosecutors wrote. “They failed. They are not heroes, they are criminals.”
Oath Keepers boss Stewart Rhodes is serving the longest sentence on January 6 to date: 18 years in federal prison. Federal prosecutors had searched 25 years. Rhodes was “a constant threat and a danger to this country and to the republic and to the very fabric of this democracy,” US District Judge Amit Mehta said in his sentencing.
In a court filing Thursday night, prosecutors called Tarrio a “naturally charismatic leader, a skilled propagandist, and the famed president of the national Proud Boys organization” who “had influence over countless subordinate members of his group and members of the public.” in general”.
Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was charged with conspiring to commit sedition for his group’s participation in the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol.
