2023-08-31 18:28:33
WASHINGTON (AP) — A former organizer of the far-right group Proud Boys was sentenced Thursday to 17 years in prison for leading the assault on the U.S. Congress to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden following the 2020 election. .
The sentence for Joseph Biggs is the second longest handed down for the assault so far, following the 18-year prison sentence for Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes.
Federal prosecutors recommended a 33-year sentence for Biggs. He and other Proud Boys joined the mob that on January 6, 2021 broke through police ranks and forced lawmakers to flee during the joint session of Congress to certify Democrat Biden’s electoral victory.
Biggs acknowledged before the judge that he “screwed up that day,” but attributed it to being “seduced by the crowd” of Trump supporters outside the Capitol and said he is not a violent person or “a terrorist.”
The judge who convicted Biggs will also separately sentence four other Proud Boys convicted by a jury in May.
Enrique Tarrio, the top leader of the Proud Boys, is scheduled to be sentenced on Tuesday.
Tarrio was not in Washington on January 6. He had been arrested two days before the Capitol riot on charges of damaging a Black Lives Matter banner during an earlier demonstration in the nation’s capital, and complied with a judge’s order to leave town following his arrest. He handpicked Biggs and Proud Boys chapter president Ethan Nordean to lead the group on the ground in his absence, prosecutors said.
Biggs, from Ormond Beach, Florida, served in the military for eight years before being medically discharged in 2013. He later worked as a correspondent for Infowars, the website run by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Lawyers for the defendants argue that the Justice Department is unfairly holding its clients accountable for the violent actions of others in the crowd of Trump supporters on Capitol Hill.
More than 1,100 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the riots on Capitol Hill. More than 600 of them have been found guilty and sentenced.
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