Two high-ranking former members of the Proud Boys, a far-right militia group, were sentenced Thursday after being convicted of seditious conspiracy for his involvement in plotting the violent insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and disrupting the peaceful transfer of power in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.
Joseph Biggs, the former second-in-command of the Proud Boys, was sentenced to 17 years in prison, and Zach Riehl, who presided over the Proud Boys’ Philadelphia chapter, received a 15-year sentence. Both were charged with seditious conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, assaulting police, and destruction of government property
Fifteen years is notably lower than sentencing guidelines for Riehl, who also perjured himself on the witness stand and assaulted law enforcement officers with a chemical spray, both of which increased the possibility that he faced a sentence of 36 years to life.
Both sentences were roughly half of the 30-plus years the government requested as a penalty, but together they represent some of the most severe issued among the some 1,100 criminal cases stemming from the attack as the prosecutions escalate toward the organizers of the insurrection. They also marks the first in a series of sentencings scheduled for this week and next for other former members of the far-right militia group who were convicted of sedition and other high-profile crimes, including its former leader Enrique Tarrio.
The FBI’s sprawling investigation into the origins of the Jan. 6 riot, where supporters of former President Donald Trump fought their way into the Capitol by smashing windows and doors, using bear spray, flag poles and other weapons to break through barricades and overcome law enforcement officers, ultimately charged more than 20 Proud Boys in total from state chapters all across the country.
Upon sentencing, a tearful Biggs expressed remorse, saying that he knows he must be punished but begged U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly to allow him one more day to walk his daughter to school and pick her up at the end of the day.
“I definitely don't want to be a person affiliated with any more groups unless it's my daughter's PTA," he said.
"I was seduced by the crowd, and I just moved forward. I was curious. I wanted to see what would happen,” he said. “My curiosity got the best of me, and I’m going to have to live with that for the rest of my life."
Riehl was similarly remorseful.
“It’s my fault,” Riehl said, adding that he regretted becoming too involved with politics. "I let it consume my life and I lost track of who and what mattered most.”
“It wasn’t just January 6th. It was the events, the protests and all the political animosity that came with it,” he said. “I’m done with all of it. I’m done peddling lies for other people that don’t care about me.”
But as he handed down the sentence, Kelly, a Trump appointee, reminded Biggs – and separately, Riehl – that the event he helped organize was a “national disgrace.”
“What happened on Jan. 6 harmed an important American custom,” the judge said to Biggs. “That day broke our tradition of peacefully transferring power, which is among the most precious things we had as Americans. Notice I said ‘had’ – we don’t have it anymore.”
“The mob brought an entire branch of government to heel.”
Notably, Kelly applied a so-called “terrorism enhancement” to Biggs’ sentence – a distinction that’s so far only been added to sentences handed down for members of another far-right group, the Oath Keepers, but which seems poised to also apply to Biggs’ former Proud Boy colleagues upon their sentencings next week.
“While blowing up a building in some city somewhere is a very bad act, the nature of the constitutional moment we were in that day is something that is so sensitive that it deserves a significant sentence,” Kelly said.
