Proud Boy leader Joseph Biggs sentenced to 17 years for Jan. 6 crimes

A former leader in the far-right Proud Boys group was sentenced Thursday to 17 years in prison, just shy of the longest punishment imposed on a participant in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

"That day broke our tradition of peaceful transfer of power," said U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly as he sentenced Joseph Biggs, 39, of Florida. "We don't have it anymore."

Biggs was one of four Proud Boys found guilty at trial earlier this year of engaging in a seditious conspiracy to keep Donald Trump in power by force, along with obstructing Congress and other crimes.

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, found guilty of a separate seditious conspiracy involving his extremist group, was sentenced earlier this year to 18 years in prison. In both cases, judges applied enhancements for terrorism that pushed the sentencing range they must consider. But Kelly told Biggs, "It's not my job to label you a terrorist and my sentence today wont do that. That's for other people to argue about."

The Justice Department made that argument, saying Biggs is as responsible as former Proud Boys chairman Henry "Enrique" Tarrio for the group's involvement in the Capitol attack and that both men engaged in terrorism.

"They aimed to intimidate and terrify" not just lawmakers but "the rest of the country that they didn't agree with and make them yield to their political point of view," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason McCullough said in court. "That's no different than the act of a spectacular bombing of a building."

He invoked the example of a parent afraid to take a child to a polling place or a couple worried about violence at a presidential inauguration.

"That is what they set out to do," McCullough said. "They pushed us to the edge of a constitutional crisis."

He said deterrence was necessary precisely because the Proud Boys were able to create that fear without any weapons of mass destruction. "It's almost seductive," McCullough said. "It just takes slick propaganda in an environment where you encourage people to basically say, 'It's us against them.'"

Biggs said in a tearful statement to the judge that he was not a seducer of men but one of the "seduced."

"I know that I messed up that day, but I'm not a terrorist," Biggs said. "My curiosity got the better of me, and I'll have to live with that for the rest of my life." He said he had been planning for Jan. 6 to be his last outing with the Proud Boys, and that his violent statements were a way to vent his anger over being injured in combat and learning that a young family member had been abused. "I used that rhetoric . . . to cope and to not take violent action," he said.

Defense attorney Norm Pattis argued that it was harsh sentences for the Proud Boys that would make "people afraid to go to protests, for fear that if they become violent their incendiary speech might be used against them."

Kelly responded that it was "fair game" to consider protected speech as evidence of criminal intent. "People's fear that if they get violent their words will be used against them - there's simply no legal reason why that can't be," he said. But he agreed that the Proud Boys' conduct, while "extremely serious," wasn't the same as trying to "blow up a skyscraper."

Prosecutors argued Biggs had "talents" that gave him particularly dangerous. As a former employee of Infowars host Alex Jones, who helped organized the rally that preceded the riot, Biggs had a national platform. As a combat veteran, he had military experience. And he was close with Tarrio, who was barred from D.C. before Jan. 6 over the theft and destruction of a Black Lives Matter flag at an earlier protest.

With Tarrio unavailable, Biggs was put in charge of the Proud Boys on-the-ground efforts alongside Ethan Nordean of the Seattle area, who is set to be sentenced Friday.

"Biggs maintained his leadership position throughout the day on January 6," prosecutors said in their sentencing memorandum, directing a "relentless effort" to intimidate lawmakers confirming the electoral count.

A large contingent of Proud Boys marched to the Capitol before Trump directed his supporters there. Then, prosecutors say, Biggs led the growing mob forward through barricades and into the building. Capitol Police Officer Shae Cooney testified earlier in the week about standing on the other side of that crowd, trying to keep them out. She couldn't stop to connect with her family, she said, or to check on Officer Brian D. Sicknick, who collapsed hours after the riot and died the next day.

"They decided to break the law, assault officers and cause an officer to lose his life and have other officers take their lives because of things that they saw," Cooney said. "Because the people in this courtroom decided that they weren't happy with how an election went."

After the riot, Biggs lied to the FBI, saying first that he wasn't at the Capitol and then that he was but he never went inside. He also encouraged other Proud Boys to delete any potentially incriminating messages after Tarrio's arrest. Like several other Proud Boys, Biggs was in contact with federal agents in advance of Jan. 6 but only provided information about the group's enemies on the left, according to court records.

Later Thursday, Kelly is also scheduled to sentence Zachary Rehl of Philadelphia, another member of the Jan. 6 leadership group. Tarrio was scheduled for sentencing Wednesday, but that hearing was moved to next week. Prosecutors are asking for a 30-year sentence for Rehl.

Representing both Biggs and Rehl, defense attorney Pattis argued that they were not responsible for the violence of others or for Trump's efforts to undermine the democratic process. Of the five Proud Boys who went on trial together, only one was convicted of assaulting an officer - Dominic Pezzola, for stealing a police riot shield that he then used to break a window and create the rioters' first point of entry into the Capitol building. Pezzola was also the only defendant acquitted on the seditious conspiracy charge.

"There is a crisis of legitimacy in this country," Pattis said, but "to suggest that this is the responsibility of Mr. Biggs is silly." He questioned why Trump was not charged with seditious conspiracy when he was indicted on other felonies related to the 2020 election.

The judges imposing felony sentences in Jan. 6, 2021, cases have largely gone below federal sentencing guidelines and prosecutors' recommendations. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta imposed a term of 15 months on the wife of Oath Keepers leader Kelly Meggs, calling guidelines of 97 to 121 months for the 62-year-old woman "overly harsh." He previously sentenced Meggs, convicted of seditious conspiracy with Rhodes, to 12 years in prison.