The proposed jail sentences would nearly double the lengthiest Jan. 6 sentence handed down to date — 18 years for Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes — a decision prosecutors say reflects the pivotal role that Proud Boys leaders played in stoking and exacerbating the violence at the Capitol that day.
“The defendants understood the stakes, and they embraced their role in bringing about a ‘revolution,’” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo released Thursday night. “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.”
Both Tarrio and Biggs were convicted of seditious conspiracy in May by a jury who also found allies Philadelphia Proud Boy leader Zachary Rehl and Seattle Proud Boy leader Ethan Nordean guilty of the grave offense. Prosecutors are seeking 30 years for Rehl and 27 years for Nordean.
A fifth Proud Boy tried alongside the others, Dominic Pezzola, was acquitted of seditious conspiracy but convicted on other serious offenses. Pezzola may be the best known of the group, however. He shattered a Senate-wing window with a stolen police riot shield, triggering the breach of the Capitol itself. Prosecutors are seeking a 20-year jail term for him.
Nordean, Biggs, Pezzola and Rehl have been in prison since early 2021, and Tarrio has been in jail since his arrest in February 2022.
Prosecutors spent much of the memo describing the trauma the attack caused for members of Congress and outnumbered police officers, many of whom were injured defending the building. The attack, which the Justice Department says was sparked in significant ways by the Proud Boys, left a stain on American democracy. It was, in part, why prosecutors are urging the judge to deem their conduct “terrorism” — a designation that would result in sharply increased sentences.
“[W]hile freedom, democracy, and the Constitution prevailed on January 6th, it was not without cost,” they wrote. “Alongside the enduring legacy of bravery and honor by those who defended our country, a harsh reality has emerged — political violence is not some foreign concept that exists only in faraway lands, it exists here too.”
The proposed sentences set up a test for U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, who presided over the contentious four-month trial of the Proud Boys leaders earlier this year. Defense lawyers repeatedly argued that despite the group’s presence at the Capitol, prosecutors had pieced together a case based largely on their private messages, which they said were simply First Amendment-protected expressions of dissent. Nordean, Biggs and Rehl are seeking sentences that would range between one and three years — and largely be fulfilled by the time that the three men have already spent in prison while awaiting trial.
But prosecutors cast the group’s actions as significantly more calculated and sinister. They described the group as launching an “assault” on the Capitol that started at 10 a.m., when a group of 200 carefully selected members of the Proud Boys amassed at the Washington Monument. They marched down the mall, away from the site of Trump’s rally, and to the lightly defended Capitol grounds, where they whipped up the crowd into a frenzy before rioters stormed the barricades.
Videos show Nordean, Biggs and Rehl at the front of the crowd at pivotal moments, with pockets of other Proud Boys joining skirmishes, removing metal bike racks that police were using to keep the crowd at bay and facilitating the larger mob’s access to Capitol grounds.
Several members of the Proud Boys would ignite a brawl near the Senate wing of the building just before Pezzola barreled through with a riot shield to break into the building, where he would smoke a cigar and film himself reciting a Proud Boys slogan.
Tarrio was not present at the Capitol on Jan. 6, in part because he was arrested and ordered to stay away from Washington two days earlier when he arrived in the city. Prosecutors revealed evidence at trial that Tarrio expected this arrest since he had maintained a relationship with a D.C. Police Officer, Shane Lamond. Lamond had tipped Tarrio to the police’s efforts to charge him for burning a Black Lives Matter flag in December, after a pro-Trump march. The officer was charged with obstructing the investigation earlier this year.
But prosecutors say Tarrio continued to rally his men from afar, urging them to remain in the Capitol as police worked frantically to clear it and comparing his allies to Founding Fathers as the violence unfolded on TV. Prosecutors also recounted evidence that Tarrio had received from a girlfriend a few days before Jan. 6 a document titled “1776 Returns” that outlined a plan for occupying government buildings in order to derail the transfer of power.
The Proud Boys’ arc as a group was a central element of the lengthy trial. They gained prominence during the Trump administration for their street clashes with liberal protesters. But their recruitment went into overdrive after Trump mentioned them during a September 2020 debate against Biden.
“Stand back and stand by,” he told them when asked by moderator Chris Wallace if he would condemn the group’s violent tactics.
Evidence at trial showed the Proud Boys took his words as a rallying cry and their ranks quickly swelled. The group, led by Tarrio, quickly rallied to Trump’s defense after his apparent defeat in the 2020 election, echoing his claims of fraud and taking to the streets in November and December for marches in Washington that would turn violent. But it was when Trump called supporters to Washington on Jan. 6 — in a tweet that urged them to “Be there. Will be wild” — that the group started planning for a much larger effort, prosecutors said.
Norm Pattis, a defense attorney for Biggs and Rehl, made a different sort of plea in his call for “time-served” sentences for his clients. He cast the trial as part of a larger political battle with the Proud Boys getting caught in the crossfire.
“[T]he Government claimed the republic was in jeopardy and seeks to treat these misguided patriots as terrorists,” Pattis wrote. “This is grievously wrong … The challenge in divided times is not to divide and conquer, but to build bridges between people who love this country, sometimes in shockingly different ways.”
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