WASHINGTON (CN) — A federal judge shaved a year off a Washington Proud Boy’s six-year prison sentence on Friday for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and planning a failed second insurrection the following month in Portland, Oregon.
Marc Bru, 44, had been sentenced in January 2024 for marching with a group of 20 other Proud Boys to the Capitol, where he clashed with officers and forced his way into the Senate gallery.
Bru represented himself at trial and struck a defiant tone at his first sentencing, calling Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg “despicable” and “a clown.” He openly declared his lack of remorse.
After the Barack Obama appointee handed down the new five-year term, Bru said he thought the prosecution was a “political act” and an “eye-opener.”
“Putting me in that system longer, it is not much of a deterrent; I’m in there and I see what’s going on within the system,” Bru said, adding that he had been in 12 different facilities over the last 15 months.
Bru and his standby counsel Benjamin Muse, a federal defender from Alaska, had requested Boasberg reduce the sentence to time served, crediting Bru with the 15 months he has already spent behind bars.
Muse said his client had shown some remorse in the nearly 10 months since his previous sentencing, which he described as a “sea change.”
Boasberg noted that the new 60-month sentence was primarily a result of the D.C. Circuit’s decision to vacate Bru’s felony conviction for obstructing an official proceeding in September.
The decision came in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling that Title 18 U.S. Code Section 1512(c)(2) must be narrowly tailored to explicit document destruction in regard to the Capitol riot.
The question before the court centered on the scope of an “otherwise” clause between two subsections in Title 18 U.S. Code Section 1512, which extends the statute’s covered conduct from document destruction to anything that “otherwise obstructs, influences or impedes any official proceeding.”
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority’s opinion that going forward, the Justice Department must prove that a defendant specifically engaged in document destruction to interfere with an official proceeding to charge them with 1512 (c)(2).
The appellate panel remanded the case for resentencing on Bru’s remaining six convictions for entering and remaining in a restricted building, disorderly conduct in a restricted building, entering the Gallery of Congress, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, parading in a Capitol building and a separate obstruction charge.
Bru was convicted at a bench trial in October on five misdemeanor counts and two felony counts of civil disorder and obstruction of an official proceeding.
Without the 1512 “obstruction of an official proceeding” conviction, the recommended range for Bru’s sentence dropped significantly, from 70-87 months before his first sentencing to 18-24 months before Friday’s hearing.
Boasberg said he was hesitant to accept the Justice Department’s recommendation that he reaffirm his original 72-month sentence, noting that term was three times the high-end of the new guideline range.
He justified the new 60-month sentence by focusing on Bru’s problematic conduct surrounding Jan. 6 and throughout the case’s proceedings, which Boasberg said went “beyond the pale.”
A month after the Capitol riot, in February 2021, Bru began planning a second, “more violent” insurrection in Portland, Oregon, calling for thousands of “patriots” to occupy government buildings and courts in the city, according to the Justice Department in their initial sentencing memorandum.
The plot was foiled after he was arrested on seven federal charges in the case.
Following his sentencing, Bru called into the Freedom Corner — a nightly vigil outside the Central Detention Facility where incarcerated Jan. 6. defendants are held — where he accused Boasberg and judges writ-large in engaging in human trafficking.
‘The fact is that these people need nothing less than a fucking rope,” Bru said, according to the Justice Department’s supplemental sentencing memorandum.
Since entering the federal prison system, Bru had also continued fundraising for his legal defense via GiveSendGo, where he raised $10,709 as of Nov. 15, according to the Justice Department.
At his initial sentencing, Bru repeatedly interrupted the proceedings to demand such records, which led Boasberg to adjourn the court for a 10-minute recess. After receiving the sentence, Bru expressed no remorse for his actions, even outright saying he had not been deterred.
“You can give me 100 years and I would still do it again,” Bru said in January.
Boasberg said that Bru’s conduct following both his trial and his first sentencing was among the worst he had seen.
“In my 22 years as a judge, I’ve never seen a defendant say the things he said,” Boasberg said on Friday.
According to the Justice Department’s newest monthly update on the Capitol riot cases released Wednesday, 1,561 individuals have been charged in connection with the riot. In the 46 months since Jan. 6, 1,028 of those defendants have been sentenced; 645 got prison terms and 143 would spend their terms in home detention.