WASHINGTON — A man whose relatives were key architects of America’s conservative movement was sentenced Friday to three years and nine months in prison for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which included smashing windows that allowed the crowd to enter . storm into the building during the first breach.
Federal prosecutors sought more than 11 years in prison and a counter-terrorism sentence for Brent Bozell IV, the son of Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell III and grandson of Joe McCarthy speechwriter Brent Bozell Jr., brother of William F. Buckley Jr. -in-law and ghost-wrote Barry Goldwater’s “The Conscience of a Conservative.”
But Judge John Bates sentenced Bozell IV on Friday to 45 months in prison and $4,727 in restitution. Bates found that the plain language of the promotion of terrorism statute would apply in Bozell’s case, saying it’s “a little difficult for me to escape that conclusion.” But Bates disagreed with the enormous impact this would have on Bozell’s sentencing and seemed uncomfortable with labeling a man with a leading role in the politically motivated attack on the U.S. Capitol as a domestic terrorist.
“I’m not confident that this label is an appropriate label for the defendant to carry,” Bates said, noting that as Bozell smashed windows forcing the crowd into the building, he joined the crowd as these multiple lines of police overtook, his behavior was not “meaningfully violent” and he did not cause physical harm to officers. Yet he previously found that Bozell was “leaning with his head down toward the officers” and “forcibly” making contact with officers as the crowd. accused a police line. He also found that Bozell repeatedly lied on the stand about his behavior.
Bates also took the opportunity to indirectly push back on the rhetoric Republican politicians have used about the January 6 suspects.
“At no time should the January 6 rioters be considered true patriots,” said Bates, a George W. Bush appointee. ‘They are not political prisoners. They are not hostages.”
The Jan. 6 rioters now face the consequences of their actions based on a fair, unbiased and even application of the law, Bates said.
Bozell, with his father on the bench, apologized for his actions in court and said he had forever stained his family. “I don’t recognize the person in those videos,” Bozell said, vowing to spend the rest of his life making sure what he did on Jan. 6 was not the story of his life.
But Bozell notably didn’t say he now realized he had been misled about the 2020 election, or that he blamed the former president Donald Trump‘s lies for his behavior, as many January 6 defendants have done.
When asked by NBC News after his conviction whether he still believed the 2020 election was “stolen,” as Trump falsely claimed in the lead-up to the attack, Bozell declined to comment. (In carefully worded language, Bozell’s defense memo says only that Bozell “accepts that the President of the United States is Joe Biden,” which is the same tactic Republican politicians have used to avoid discussing their views on the 2020 election in detail .)
On January 6, 2021, Bozell joined the pro-Trump mob as it broke through the police line and smashed windows during the initial breach of the Capitol. He stood side by side with members of the far-right Proud Boys, as well as an anti-abortion rights advocate accused of plotting to kill FBI employees working on his Jan. 6 case.
Bozell headed to the Senate Gallery and then to the Senate floor. He also joined the crowd in another violent breach of the Capitol rotunda doors, allowing other rioters to storm the building.
Prosecutors say Bozell “led the charge” on Jan. 6 because he “believed the presidential election had been ‘stolen’ and therefore planned to respond with violence.” They seek an enhancement of the terrorism penalty — the same given to five members of the Proud Boys, four of whom have been convicted of seditious conspiracy — and say Bozell’s actions “demonstrated a clear intent to defraud Congress.” from certifying the results of the elections through the use of both physical force and destruction of property’, conduct that ‘exemplifies an intention to influence and retaliate against the conduct of the government through intimidation or coercion and that justifies the use of the reinforcement of terrorism’.
Prosecutors also cited Bozell’s comments that the “siege of the Capitol was morally justified” and his references to former Vice President Mike Pence as a “traitor” as evidence of his intent to engage in an act of domestic terrorism .
In a court filing this week, prosecutors said they secured sentencing enhancements for terrorism in a handful of Jan. 6 cases, including against Proud Boys such as Enrique Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison, the longest sentence ever. 6 case.
Prosecutors also said Bozell came up with “outrageous justifications for his behavior on January 6 that were both inconsistent with the video evidence and implausible” during his trial testimony, leading to his conviction in September on numerous charges, including five crimes.
Bozell was caught with the help of online sleuths, as well as local residents who recognized him because he was wearing a sweatshirt with the name of the school his children attended in Pennsylvania.
The prosecutor’s sentencing memo notes that Bozell texted his brother in an attempt to get his father to retract his public condemnation of the violence after Jan. 6. His lawyers wrote that Bozell was part of a family that was “too personally and emotionally ‘invested’ in the ultimate outcome of the 2020 election” and that Bozell is “ashamed that he broke windows of the U.S. Capitol and got inside gone.”
Bozell’s father wrote a letter of support, saying that he had “remained silent for the past 3.5 years” so that he would not “overturn the apple cart of justice” he now believed in – especially because of the decision to seek a improving sentencing for terrorism – that “there is more going on” in his son’s case.
“I am not advocating my son’s innocence, only that his punishment matches the crime. I ask the Court to consider my son’s character, which is outstanding and championed by absolutely everyone around him,” Bozell III wrote.
Bozell III founded the Parents Television and Media Council in 1995, when his son, now in his mid-40s, was a teenager. The organization focused on shows like “Friends,” “Dawson’s Creek” and “Spin City,” along with video games like “Mortal Kombat.” Bozell III had said during the 2016 presidential campaign that Donald Trump “may be the biggest charlatan of them all,” but he focused on defending Trump and even wrote a 2019 book titled “Unmasked: Big Media’s War Against Trump’.
Bozell’s grandfather was “convicted of attacking a police officer with a five-foot wooden cross” after leading an anti-abortion attack on a Washington, D.C., clinic in 1970, according to his 1997 obituary in The Washington Post.
On Friday, Bozell’s attorney Eric Snyder argued that while Bozell “is many things,” he is not a terrorist.
“Good people do bad things,” Snyder said. “This is a good person who did something terrible.”
Bozell is “a lucky guy” who has “had all these advantages,” Synder said, calling him “lucky.” He said Bozell was aware that he had “tarnished the name of a good family,” and said the Bozells were also known for their other works outside politics.
Bozell himself addressed the officers present, as well as his family and the judge.
“I cannot apologize enough,” he said, adding that the “devastating reality” of what he did not only impacted him but his family, adding that he was not raised that way.
“I don’t know what happened that day and I can’t apologize enough,” Bozell said, adding that he had corrected people he encountered who said they supported what he did on Jan. 6.
He also apologized to the people of DC, noting that he wished he could go door to door and apologize as well. He said he caused a lot of harassment at his daughter’s school because he wore a school sweater that day, allowing online sleuths to track him down.
Not long after his son was convicted, Bozell III took to the X platform to say that while he thought Bates was “a good man,” his son’s conviction was “a complete travesty,” before bringing up rioting that took place at locations. that wasn’t the U.S. Capitol during the Electoral College count.
“This was a political persecution because my son, Leo Brent Bozell IV, bears his father’s name, and his father is a well-known conservative leader who is supporting President Trump in 2024,” Bozell III wrote. “I love my son and will be more candid than ever. The criminal investigation into this corrupt Justice Department is long overdue.”
In the more than three years since the attack on the Capitol, federal prosecutors have charged more than 1,424 defendants and secured more than 1,019 convictions. Of the 884 suspects convicted, 541 received periods of incarceration, ranging from a few days behind bars to Tarrio’s 22-year sentence.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
