Aug. 31 (UPI) — Former Proud Boys top organizer Joseph Biggs was sentenced Thursday to 17 years in prison for seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Prosecutors had recommended 33 years because they said Biggs was the “tip of the spear” for the mob’s violent effort to stop the lawful certification of the 2020 presidential election results, aiming to keep Donald Trump in power.
Biggs celebrated the attack when he said during a recorded interview afterward that it was a “warning shot to the government” that showed them “how weak they truly are.”
Biggs’ sentence is the second-longest of the Jan. 6 prison sentences to date.
Prosecutors argued in a sentencing memo that Biggs was “a vocal leader and influential proponent of the group’s shift toward political violence.”
Biggs’ co-defendant Zachary Rehl was scheduled to be sentenced later Thursday.
Former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio and his associate Ethan Nordean had their sentencing hearings delayed this week after the judge presiding over the case fell ill on Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly was unable to attend court because of an unexpected illness.
Nordean’s hearing was rescheduled to 2 p.m. Friday, while Tarrio is set to be sentenced at 2 p.m. Tuesday. Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola is set to be sentenced Friday, as well.
Prosecutors are demanding a 33-year sentence for Tarrio and 27 years for Nordean.
The men were convicted in May on the rare charge of seditious conspiracy and several other felonies.
“The defendants understood the stakes, and they embraced their role in bringing about a ‘revolution,'” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum to Kelly.
“They unleashed a force on the Capitol that was calculated to exert their political will on elected officials by force and to undo the results of a democratic election. The foot soldiers of the right aimed to keep their leader in power. They failed. They are not heroes; they are criminals.”
Pezzola was acquitted of seditious conspiracy but was found guilty of other felonies, including assaulting and resisting police as he smashed a window to enter the Capitol.
Prosecutors want 30 years for Rehl and 20 years for Pezzola.
More than 20 other Proud Boys members from chapters ranging from Hawaii to New York were charged in separate Jan. 6-related indictments.
Other members of the Oath Keepers also have been found guilty of seditious conspiracy, with founder Stewart Rhodes sentenced in May to 18 years in federal prison.
