Federal prosecutors are seeking a 33-year seditious conspiracy sentence for Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio in the Jan. 6, 2021 violent insurrection at the U.S Capitol. File Photo by Gamal Diab/EPA-EFE
Aug. 18 (UPI) — Federal prosecutors are seeking 33-year prison sentences for Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio who was convicted for seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
A sentencing court filing issued Thursday said they were seeking the same sentence for member Joseph Biggs, who was convicted of the same crime in what would be the stiffest sentences sought so far in the Jan. 6 cases.
The government is also seeking a 30-year sentence for Zachary Rehl, and 27 years for Ethan Nordean. Both were also convicted of seditious conspiracy in the Proud Boys Jan. 6 case.
For Dominic Pezzola they want a 20-year sentence. Pezzola was acquitted of seditious conspiracy but convicted of assaulting and resisting officers as he smashed a window to enter the capitol in the violent Jan. 6 attack.
The Proud Boys sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 28. They were convicted May 4.
Federal prosecutors said the Proud Boys saw themselves as “foot soldiers of the right” and were prepared to use, and did use, violence to try to stop Congress from legally certifying 2020 presidential election results.
“The defendants understood the stakes, and they embraced their role in bringing about a “revolution,” federal prosecutors said in their sentencing court filing. “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.”
The government said Proud Boys attacked American democracy, threatening the bedrock principles of democracy and the rule of law in the United States.
In the sentencing court filing, prosecutors said the Proud Boys posed a greater physical threat to democracy than the Oath Keepers did on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Unlike the Oath Keeper defendants, whose numbers were limited to a core group of roughly two dozen men and women,” prosecutors wrote. “These defendants led nearly 200 like-minded men onto Capitol grounds, who also engaged in violent attacks on law enforcement and destruction of government property, thus enabling the defendant’s calculated attempt to forcibly stop the lawful transfer of power.”