A one-time leader in the Proud Boys far-right extremist group has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for his role in the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, tying the record for the longest sentence in the attack.
Ethan Nordean was one of several members convicted of spearheading an attack on the U.S. Capitol to try to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden after the 2020 presidential election.
Nordean was "the undisputed leader on the ground on January 6," said prosecutor Jason McCullough. Prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence the Seattle-area chapter president to 27 years.
He was one of two Proud Boys sentenced Friday. Dominic Pezzola was convicted of smashing a window at the U.S. Capitol in the building's first breach on January 6, 2021. As he walked out of the courtroom after being sentenced to 10 years in prison, Pezzola defiantly declared "Trump won!"
The highest ranking Proud Boy convicted after a monthslong trial earlier this year, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday.
Prosecutors said Nordean's words and online postings grew increasingly violent leading up to January 6, 2021. On that day, he led a group of nearly 200 men toward the Capitol, then moved to the front of the mob and helped tear down a fence, allowing rioters to enter the grounds, according to court documents.
Defense attorneys have argued there was no plan to storm the Capitol that day and pushed back against the idea that Nordean tore down the fence or that his rhetoric was specifically about Jan. 6. Nordean, 33, of Auburn, Washington, says he now sees Jan. 6 as a "complete and utter tragedy."
"There is no rally or political protest that should hold value over human life," he said. "To anyone who I directly or even indirectly wronged, I'm sorry."
The sentence was handed down by U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, who also sentenced Pezzola earlier in the day.
Pezzola, 46, took a police officer's riot shield and used it to smash the window, allowing rioters to make the first breach into the Capitol, and later filmed a "celebratory video" with a cigar inside the building, prosecutors said. He was a recent Proud Boys recruit, however, and a jury acquitted him of the most high-profile charge, seditious conspiracy, a rarely brought Civil War-era offense. He was convicted of other serious charges, and prosecutors had asked for 20 years in prison.
"He was an enthusiastic foot soldier," prosecutor Erik Kenerson said.
Kelly noted that Pezzola, of Rochester, New York, was a newcomer to the group who didn't write the kind of increasingly violent online messages that his co-defendants did leading up to the Jan. 6 attack. Still, he was in some ways a "tip of the spear" in allowing rioters to get into the Capitol, said the judge, who decided to apply a terrorism enhancement to the sentence.
"The reality is you smashed that window in and let people begin to stream into the Capitol building and threaten the lives of our lawmakers," the judge told Pezzola. "It's not something that I ever dreamed I would have seen in our country."
'Caught up in the craziness'
Defense attorneys had asked for five years for Pezzola, saying that he got "caught up in the craziness" that day.
Pezzola testified at trial that he originally grabbed the officer's shield to protect himself from police riot control measures, and his lawyers argued that he broke only one pane of glass and that other rioters smashed out the rest of the window.
He told the judge that he wished he'd never crossed into a restricted area on January 6, and he apologized to the officer whose shield he took. "There is no place in my future for groups or politics whatsoever," he said.
But later, as he left the courtroom, he raised a fist and said, "Trump won!"
Former President Donald Trump and his allies have repeatedly and falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen. A series of federal and state investigations and dozens of lawsuits have not uncovered any evidence the election was rigged.
More than 600 convicted
Two other Proud Boys convicted at trial were sentenced Thursday. Joseph Biggs, an organizer from Ormond Beach, Florida, got 17 years, the second-longest sentence so far in the January 6 attack. Zachary Rehl, a leader of the Philadelphia chapter, got 15 years, the third longest. The sentencings come after the Proud Boys trial that laid bare far-right extremists' embrace of lies by Trump, a Republican, that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
More than 1,100 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. More than 600 of them have been convicted and sentenced.
The longest January 6-related prison sentence so far is 18 years for Stewart Rhodes, founder of another far-right extremist group, the Oath Keepers. Six members of that anti-government group also were convicted of seditious conspiracy after a separate trial last year.
