A federal judge handed down hefty sentences against two members of the Proud Boys for their role in attacking the Capitol on January 6, 2021, one who broke open a window to the building and another who took over the leadership role of the group that day.
Their sentences, both among the longest yet of the over 1,000 people charged as part of the riot, are emblematic of how judges are working to separate key figures who furthered the violence that day from those who were swept up in the crowd.
“If we don’t have the peaceful transfer of power, I don’t know what we have,” District Judge Timothy Kelly said during one of the hearings Friday. “Because that is the reflection of when we go to the ballot box, when we exercise the right to vote. That is the manifestation of that. And so, if we don’t have that, we don’t have anything.”
Kelly continued, “that didn’t honor the founders, it was the kind of thing they wrote the constitution to prevent.”
The first man to be sentenced Friday, Dominic Pezzola, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Pezzola smashed through a window to the US Capitol with a police riot shield on January 6, allowing the first wave of rioters to storm the building as members of Congress were being evacuated. Pezzola quickly became a symbol of the violence that day.
Ethan Nordean, a Proud Boy from Washington State who took over leading the group after longtime Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio was arrested on his way to Washington, DC, days before the January 6 riot, was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
Nordean’s 18-year prison sentence is tied for the longest handed down in connection with the January 6 insurrection. Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes was also sentenced to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy.
Pezzola
Images of Pezzola, nicknamed “Spazzolini,” using the police riot shield to first breach the Capitol building quickly became a symbol of the violence that day.
“The reality is you were the one who did it,” Kelly said during his sentencing hearing Friday. “You were the one who smashed that window in and let people begin to stream into the Capitol building and threaten the lives of our lawmakers. It is not something I would have ever dreamed I’d see in our country.”
“You were really, in some ways, the tip of the spear,” the judge said.
Before leaving the courtroom, Pezzola, with a raised fist, shouted, “Trump won!” just minutes after Kelly – who had already left the courtroom – said he hoped Pezzola had turned a corner.
Pezzola was the only one of the five Proud Boys defendants not convicted of seditious conspiracy. Pezzola joined the Proud Boys shortly before January 6, according to evidence shown at trial, and was praised by the organization’s leadership for his violent actions at a separate rally weeks before the Capitol riot.
The New York native was convicted of multiple other charges including assaulting or resisting a police officer, robbery of a police shield, destruction of government property and obstructing an official proceeding.
In the at times rambunctious trial, which spanned several months, prosecutors argued that Pezzola’s co-defendants, leaders of the Proud Boys, pushed lower-level members like Pezzola to be on the front lines of the violence at the Capitol.
In a written statement read aloud by prosecutors earlier this week, former Capitol police officer Mark Ode, who was assaulted by Pezzola, recounted being attacked by the mob and feeling like his life was leaving his body.
Ode wrote that he was haunted by the memory of being “pinned down by multiple assailants, being pinned down by all of their weight, while simultaneously being choked by the chinstrap of my helmet.”
“[I] felt my life fleeing my body,” Ode wrote, adding that he had “the most vivid visual of my own funeral.”
During Friday’s sentencing hearing, prosecutor Erik Kenerson said that “many Americans will approach the ballot box in 2024 with trepidation” and “will go to bed on January 5, 2025 afraid of what might happen the next day. Mark Ode certainly will.”
Pezzola, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, addressed the court during Friday’s hearing, while his wife, mother, daughter and a friend who served with him in the military sat in the courtroom.
“I need to extend my sincere apology to Officer Ode,” Pezzola said, “and if he were here, I would look him in the eyes and apologize for all the grief I caused him.” Pezzola also apologized to his wife and children and the country, adding that “the events of J6 have crumbled the reputation of the nation I served in the Marine corps.”
His wife, Lisa, told Kelly how her daughters have suffered through depression and been bullied at school since their father was arrested, saying that it “is very hard as a mother – to not be able to protect them from the outside world.”
“In no way am I making excuses for Dominic’s actions that day. As I said on the stand, he was a f**king idiot,” she said through tears.
Pezzola’s youngest daughter, Angelina, also spoke to the judge, saying that she was “everything good that my father has done” and that it’s because of him she’s a successful college student.
“I hope you give him some mercy so he can see me graduate college, so he can see me get my first home, my first job,” she said as her father sobbed at the defense table.
“All I crave is a hug from my father.”
Nordean
Nordean – who goes by the moniker “Rufio Panman” after a member of Peter Pan’s Lost Boys – rose to prominence within the organization in 2017 after a video of him knocking out an anti-fascist protester with one punch went viral online.
On the morning of January 6, Nordean and his co-defendant Joseph Biggs, led a group of approximately 100 Proud Boys towards the Capitol, donning walkie-talkie style radios and leading chants over a bullhorn.
Standing before the judge late Friday afternoon, Nordean apologized for his actions during the riot and said that “for a long time I thought of myself merely as an individual, comparing my actions that day to others… but I had to face the sobering truth: I didn’t come to January 6 as an individual, I came as a leader.”
“The truth is I did help lead a group of men back to the Capitol,” Nordean said. “I had ample opportunity to deescalate… and I did nothing.’
Defense attorney Nicholas Smith noted repeatedly Friday that Nordean “consumed at least six alcoholic beverages” on his way to the Capitol on January 6 and that his pockets were filled with empty containers. His wife and sister also addressed the judge, pleading for Nordean to be allowed to return home to his daughter.