Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio (C) will be sentenced on seditious conspiracy charges next week after his hearing on Wednesday was delayed when the judge fell ill. On Thursday, former Proud Boys organizer Joseph Biggs was sentenced to 17 years in prison on seditious conspiracy charges for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Other former Proud Boys are facing future sentencing procedures, too. File Photo by Gamal Diab/EPA-EFE
Aug. 31 (UPI) — Former Proud Boys top organizer Joseph Biggs on Thursday got 17 years in prison for seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Prosecutors had recommended 33 years because they said Biggs was the “tip of the spear” for the pro-Trump mob’s Jan. 6, 2021, violent effort to stop the lawful certification of the 2020 presidential election results.
Biggs celebrated the attack when he said during a recorded interview after Jan. 6 that the Capitol attack was a “warning shot to the government” that showed them “how weak they truly are.”
The sentence given to Biggs is the second-longest of all 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 is scheduled for sentencing Thursday afternoon.
Former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio and his associate Ethan Nordean had their sentencing hearing 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 Friday at 2 p.m., while Tarrio is set to be sentenced at 2 p.m. on Tuesday. Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola is set to be sentenced Friday.
More than 20 other Proud Boys members from chapters ranging from Hawaii to New York were charged in separate Jan. 6-related indictments.
Kelly’s absence held up what was expected to be the harshest sentence given to a person convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol invasion case. Prosecutors are demanding a 33-year sentence for Tarrio and 27 years for Nordean.
Both were convicted last May on the rare charge of seditious conspiracy and several other felonies stemming from their roles in the Capitol attack.
“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 U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Prosecutors want 30 years for Rehl and 20 years for Pezzola.
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.