One of the leaders of the American right-wing group Proud Boys, Joseph Biggs, He was sentenced this Thursday to 17 years in prison for the conspiracy to try to keep former President Donald Trump (2017-2021) in power.
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Biggs and three other members of the Proud Boys, including their leader, Enrique Tarrio, were found guilty in May of conspiring to commit sedition for the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol, that took place while the electoral victory of Democrat Joe Biden was certified in 2020.
Apart from Biggs and Tarrio, of Cuban origin, the other two characters found guilty were Ethan Nordean and Zachary Rehl.
The prosecution had requested 33 years in prison against Biggs and the sentence received this Thursday is close to that of 18 years handed down last May against the founder of the also right-wing group Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, also for the conspiracy to keep Trump in the White House.
This sentence remains the strongest imposed against a defendant for the attack on January 6, 2021, day when some 10,000 people -mostly Trump supporters- marched on the Capitol and some 800 stormed the building. There were five deaths and about 140 injured agents.
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Another defendant along with Biggs and the other three Proud Boys, Dominic Pezzola, was cleared of sedition charges in May but found guilty of assaultresistance to an agent of authority and theft of government assets.
The guilty plea came after a week of deliberations in federal court in Washington.
Throughout the process, prosecutors showed messages and videos posted by the defendants themselves and other members of the group, calling for violence and revolution against the change in the presidency.
According to the accusation, the messages talked about the need for “war”, the “revolution” and the execution of traitors.
The hearing to sentence Nordean is scheduled this Friday at 2:00 p.m. local time and on Tuesday at 2:00 p.m. it is expected that Tarrio’s will be known.
District Judge Timothy Kelly said Thursday, August 31, in sentencing Biggs that the Constitution gives citizens “many important rights for which Americans have fought and died”and stressed, according to the CNNthat the events of January 6 “broke the tradition of a peaceful transfer of power.”
Trump himself is charged in Washington DC for attempts to reverse the result of the 2020 elections. It is one of four criminal cases against him.
In Georgia, he faces 13 criminal charges for the same cause, in this case at the state level, while in New York he faces another trial for the irregular payments he made during the 2016 campaign. to silence the porn actress Stormy Daniels for an “affair” they had had in the past, and in Florida for the classified papers she took from the White House when she left power. In all of them she has pleaded not guilty.
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In the case of Georgia, he did so this Thursday in writing, waiving “freely and voluntarily” his right to be present at a formal arraignment in court, which was scheduled for September 6.
EFE
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