Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said that if elected president, he will consider granting pardons or commutations for the Proud Boys and others who have been prosecuted for their participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.
Mr. DeSantis said some of the sentences handed down in the case are “excessive” and he would examine “all those cases” because some of them involve defendants who simply walked into the U.S. Capitol and did not commit violence or vandalism during the attack.
Mr. DeSantis, in an interview with Newsmax, compared the lengthy prison terms handed down to several members of the Proud Boys with the nearly nonexistent prosecution of those who violently rioted and vandalized cities during the Black Lives Matter protests three years ago.
“If they were [Black Lives Matter], they would not have been prosecuted,” Mr. DeSantis, who ranks second in most GOP primary polls, said. “Then there’s other examples of people that probably did commit misconduct. They may have been violent.”
A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio to 22 years in prison, the longest of any Jan. 6 participant, for his role in organizing the attack.
Fellow Proud Boys leaders Joe Biggs and Zach Rehl were recently sentenced to 17 years and 15 years, respectively, for their roles in the attack.
Their sentences far exceeded the year-and-a-day prison term handed down in January to disbarred lawyer Colinford Mattis, who set fire to a New York City police car with a Molotov cocktail while protesting George Floyd’s death in May 2020.
Mr. DeSantis called the Jan. 6 melee “basically a protest that devolved into a riot,” and “a single standard of justice” must be applied.
“Maybe they were guilty, but 22 years if other people that did other things got six months? So I think we need a single standard of justice so we’ll use pardons and commutations as appropriate.”
Nearly 1,100 people have been arrested, and 300 have been sentenced in connection with the Jan. 6 riots.
Tarrio, who has been in jail since February 2022, was sentenced Tuesday for masterminding a seditious conspiracy to try to keep then-President Trump in office. The former chair of the Proud Boys wasn’t in Washington on the day of the Capitol riot because he had been ordered to stay out of the city after a prior arrest.
Biggs was convicted last week of conspiring to derail the peaceful transfer of power. Prosecutors said that he helped facilitate police line breaches and enabled the crowd to force their way into the Capitol.
Rehl was sentenced alongside Biggs for conspiring to derail the peaceful transfer of power. On Jan. 6, he was seen on video spraying a chemical at police officers. He then lied about it in court.
Prosecutors originally asked for sentences of more than 30 years for each of the leaders.
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.
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