For his involvement in the disturbance on January 6, Joe Biggs received a 17-year prison sentence.
Joe Biggs, a proud boys lieutenant and conservative commentator, was given a 17-year prison term for his involvement in the violence at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. To warn other dissidents, the judge referred to Biggs’ conduct as “terrorism.”
On Thursday in Washington, DC, Biggs received his sentence, nearly four months after being convicted responsible for the obscure Civil War-era crime of seditious conspiracy and conspiracy to hinder an official action. Along with two other prominent members of the right-wing fraternity, Biggs was found guilty along with Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio.
With Stewart Rhodes of the “Oath Keepers” militia receiving an 18-year sentence in May for the same offences, the 17-year prison sentence is the second-longest one handed down to a 2021 riot participant.
Biggs would have served nearly 34 years in prison if the prosecution had originally requested that a terrorist enhancement be applied to his sentence. Biggs was designated a terrorist by Judge Tim Kelly on the government’s side, but the additional term was not imposed. Instead, he asserted that the terrorism designation is meant to convey that a riot like the one that occurred in the Capitol “should not ever happen again and cannot happen again.”
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The real act of “terrorism” singled out by the prosecution was Biggs’ pushing over of a metal bike rack, which they claimed amounted to destruction of a “government facility” meant to “influence or impact the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion.”
Biggs admitted his blunder to Kelly, but insisted that he was not a terrorist. Insisting that he didn’t have “hate in my heart” on the day of the incident, the 39-year-old, who served in the US military before anchoring a programme on Alex Jones’ Infowars network, denied having such feelings.
Apart from breaking a fence, Biggs was found guilty of verbally insulting police officers and leading groups of Proud Boys to breach police barriers and enter the Capitol. The intention behind these actions, according to the prosecution, was to incite a “revolt against the government.”
Three other senior Proud Boys will be sentenced on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, while Tarrio will be sentenced the next week.
With regard to their involvement in the violence on January 6, 1,129 people have been criminally accused; more than 600 of them have been found guilty. Former President Donald Trump is one of those implicated. He was charged with conspiring to obstruct an official investigation, defraud the US, and conspiring to suppress the right to vote by the Justice Department’s special counsel, Jack Smith, who filed the indictment a month ago.
Trump maintains that the indictment and subsequent legal actions taken against him are part of President Joe Biden’s “Stalinist” effort to imprison his main political opponent before the election of the following year. If elected, Trump has pledged to commute the sentences of “a large portion” of the Capitol rioters, denouncing the prosecution of them as politically motivated.
