Proud Boys Florida leader jailed for 17 years over Capitol riots

Two senior members of the Proud Boys militia have been handed hefty prison sentences for their role in the 2021 assault on the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump.

Joe Biggs, the Florida leader of the self-styled paramilitary group, was sentenced to 17 years in prison for seditious conspiracy and other charges, one year shy of the longest sentence given to a participant in the riots on Jan 6, 2021.

Zachary Rehl, leader of the Philadelphia Proud Boys arm, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on the same charges.

Prosecutors called them key figures in the attack by thousands seeking to forcibly overturn Joe Biden’s November 2020 election victory, after Mr Trump repeatedly claimed without any basis that there was massive fraud in the vote.

The attack “broke our tradition of the peaceful transfer of power, which is one of the most precious things that we had as Americans,” Judge Timothy Kelly said on Thursday.

‘A need for deterrence’

Judge Kelly rejected prosecutors’ call for up to 33 years in prison, saying the attack was hardly a terrorist-like mass casualty event, and neither Biggs nor Rehl killed anybody.

Nevertheless, Judge Kelly said: “There is a need for deterrence.”

Biggs and Rehl were among five Proud Boys figures, including national chairman Enrique Tarrio, convicted on May 4 for taking a leading role in the military-style assault on the Capitol.

Rehl, Biggs, Tarrio and Ethan Nordean were convicted of seditious conspiracy, while the fifth, Dominic Pezzola, was found innocent on the sedition charge.

All five were also convicted for obstruction of a congressional proceeding, impeding law enforcement and destruction of government property.

Biggs, 39, is a US Army veteran who had worked closely with Tarrio to organise the group to storm the seat of Congress.

Two months before the attack, he posted that it was time for “war,” referring to Mr Trump’s election loss to Mr Biden.

After January 6, he declared on social media that the attack was a “warning” for the government.

‘I’m so sorry’

Ahead of sentencing on Thursday, prosecutor Jason McCullough said what Biggs and his fellow rioters had done in shutting down the Congress that day was “no different than the act of a spectacular bombing of a building”.

“They aimed to intimidate and terrify elected officials,” he said, equating the January 6 attack to terrorism.

A tearful Biggs however expressed deep regret for what had happened.

“I’m so sorry,” he told the federal court in Washington. “I know that I messed up that day, but I’m not a terrorist.”

Norman Pattis, the attorney for both Biggs and Rehl, told the court that they followed the guidance of Mr Trump in undertaking the attack, and questioned why the former president had not been charged with sedition.

Earlier this month a Justice Department special prosecutor charged Mr Trump with separate conspiracy crimes for his role in advancing the false claim that the election had been stolen from him.

“What they did is they listened to the president of the United States,” Mr Pattis told the court.

They are “guilty of believing the president who told them the country was being stolen from them,” he said.

Rehl, 38, a former US Marine, broke out in tears as he asked the judge for a lighter sentence.

“I wasted all my time on politics for people who aren’t even here today, who never offered any support, and who carelessly watched as I sank further to the bottom,” he said.

Biggs’s sentence was one year short of the 18-year sentence given in May to Stewart Rhodes, the founder of another far-right militia central to the Capitol siege, the Oath Keepers.

Mr Kelly’s rulings on Thursday suggested that Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio, who organised the group to go to Washington but was not at the Capitol himself, can expect a similar outcome when he is sentenced on September 5.

Prosecutors also recommended 33 years behind bars for him.

More than 1,100 people have been charged by the Justice Department in the Capitol attack.

Some 630 of them have pleaded guilty to various charges, and 110 have been found guilty at trial.

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