A former member of the far-right extremist group Proud Boys who smashed a window of the US Capitol during the building’s initial breach during the January 6, 2021 riot was convicted

on

Friday to 10 years in prison and then declared defiantly as he left the courtroom: Trump won!

Dominic Pezzola’s sentence is the latest to be handed down after leaders of the group were convicted of leading an attack aimed at preventing the peaceful transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden following the 2020 presidential election.

Pezzola, 46, took a police officer’s riot shield and used it to smash a window so rioters could make the first breach in the Capitol, and later filmed a celebratory video with a cigar inside the building, according to the accusers. However, he was a recent Proud Boys recruit, and a jury acquitted him of the most high-profile charge: seditious conspiracy, a Civil War crime rarely committed. He was convicted of other serious charges and prosecutors had demanded 20 years in prison.

Two ex-Proud Boys organizers have been sentenced to one of the longest prison terms over a plot to keep Trump in power

He was an enthusiastic foot soldier,” prosecutor Erik Kenerson said.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly noted that Pezzola, of Rochester, NY, was a newcomer to the group who didn’t write the kind of increasingly violent online posts that his co-defendants did leading up to the Jan. 6 attack. Still, in some ways he was a tip of the spear in allowing rioters to enter the Capitol, the judge said.

The reality is you smashed that window and let people pour into the Capitol and threatened the lives of our legislators,” the judge told Pezzola. It’s not something I ever dreamed I’d see in our country.

Defense attorneys had asked for five years for Pezzola, saying he was caught up in the craziness that day.

Enrique Tarrio, three other Proud Boys members, convicted of sedition in January 6 riot

Pezzola testified at trial that he originally took the shield from the officers to protect himself from police riot control measures, and his lawyers argued that he only broke one window pane and it was other rioters who smashed the rest of the window .

He told the judge that he wished he had never entered a restricted area on January 6, and apologized to the officer whose shield he had taken. There is no place for groups or politics in my future, he said.

But later, as he left the courtroom, he raised a fist and said, Trump won!

Another Proud Boy, former chapter president Ethan Nordean, of Auburn, Washington, will also be sentenced Friday. Prosecutors are asking the judge to sentence him to 27 years.

Proud boy under house arrest in January 6 case disappears ahead of sentencing

Two of their co-defendants were sentenced on Thursday to some of the longest prison terms so far in the January 6 attack. Joseph Biggs, an organizer from Ormond Beach, Florida, received 17 years, and Zachary Rehl, a leader of the Philadelphia chapter, received 15 years.

The most prominent defendant in the months-long trial, former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, will be sentenced on Tuesday. His sentencing was moved from Wednesday to next week because the judge was ill.

The Proud Boys trial exposed far-right extremists that Trump, a Republican, was espousing the lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

More than 1,100 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot.

More than

600 of them have been convicted and sentenced.

The longest prison sentence associated with January 6 to date was 18 years for Founder Stewart Rhodes

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another far-right extremist group, the Oath Keepers. Six members of that anti

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government group was also convicted of seditious conspiracy after a separate trial last year.