Joe Biggs, an organizer of the Proud Boys, a white supremacist terrorist organization, was sentenced to 17 years in federal imprisonment in late August 2023 for seditious conspiracy and several other criminal counts related to the January 6, 2001, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Biggs’ co-defendant Zachary Rehl was sentenced the same day to 15 years.
“Our Constitution and laws give you so many important rights that Americans have fought and died for and that you yourself put on a uniform to defend,” District Judge Timothy Kelly said in sentencing Biggs. “People around the world would give anything for these rights.”
But January 6, 2021, Kelly said, “broke our tradition of the peaceful transferring of power” in the United States.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/31/politics/proud-boys-biggs-sentencing/index.html
During a monthslong trial, prosecutors presented evidence that Biggs and three of his co-defendants – Rehl, Ethan Nordean, and Enrique Tarrio – plotted and broadly encouraged violence in the attack on the Capitol.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/31/politics/proud-boys-biggs-sentencing/index.html
In his sentencing of Biggs and Rehl, Kelly called them part of “a national disgrace” that contributed to the ruin of America’s tradition of a peaceful transfer of power.
Tarrio, who was once national chairman of the Proud Boys, was sentenced in early September 2023 to 22 years in prison.
See my post on Tarrio, https://drchrislamb.com/only-the-best-people-enrique-tarrio/
Biggs suffered a traumatic brain injury while serving in the U.S. Army. According to NBC News and other media outlets, Biggs, upon his military discharge for the brain injury, began working for a number of conservative media organizations, including InfoWars, which is owned by far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/proud-boy-joe-biggs-faces-decades-prison-jan-6-seditious-conspiracy-ca-rcna102597
The cause of Jones’ brain damage is not known.
In July 2023, Biggs was among members of the Proud Boys who were ordered to pay more than a million dollars as part of a civil suit involving the destruction of property at the campus of the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington D.C. in December 2020.
D.C. Superior Court Judge Neal E. Kravitz described the “highly orchestrated” and “hateful and overtly racist conduct” from Proud Boys members during the “attack” on the AME church. A Black Lives Matter sign owned by the church was allegedly destroyed, CNN reported.
Judge Kravitz wrote that the Proud Boys have “incited and committed acts of violence against members of Black and African American communities across the country. They also have victimized women, Muslims, Jews, immigrants, and other historically marginalized people.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/01/politics/proud-boys-fined-ame-church-destruction/index.html
On January 6, 2021, Tarrio and Biggs told Proud Boys supporters to show up “incognito” in Washington, D.C., without their typical black-and-yellow attire, according to court documents. Prosecutors said the insurrectionists hoped to pass for supporters of Antifa, the anti-fascist movement that often clashes with far-right groups.
“We are going to smell like you, move like you, and look like you. The only thing we’ll do that’s us is think like us!” Biggs posted on the social media site Parler, according to the affidavit. “Jan 6th is gonna be epic.”
(This is an exact quote)
Donald Trump gave the Proud Boys his nod of approval during a debate with Democratic candidate Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign. When asked to condemn white supremacist organizations, Trump told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”
Biggs said he only entered the Capitol on January 6 to use the bathroom.
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/31/1196972258/proud-boys-sentence-jan-6-joseph-biggs
This is incidentally the same excuse Lee Harvey Oswald used to explain why he was in the Texas School Book Depository in late November 1963.
There is a photo of Biggs in the Senate gallery on January 6.
Biggs cried as he begged Judge Kelly to delay the beginning of his prison term to allow him to be present to take his young daughter to school.
“I am not a terrorist,” he said. “I know I have to be punished, but at least give me the opportunity to take my daughter to school one day.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/31/politics/proud-boys-biggs-sentencing/index.html
