QP!
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Let's all hope the Judge decides to make a statement here and exceed the sentencing guidelines with a 'terrorism' enhancement so we can see sentences on the maximum end!
Prosecutors seek 30-year sentences for Proud Boys leaders in Jan. 6 case
Prosecutors are seeking 33-year prison sentences for former Proud Boys chair Enrique Tarrio and his ally Joe Biggs, who they say aimed to foment a revolution on Jan. 6 to keep former President Donald Trump in power.
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....
...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,” ...
...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....
... 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....
