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Federal prosecutors sought to put conservative media personality Brent Bozell III’s son in prison for nearly 12 years for participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion.
In a sentencing memorandum submitted to the trial federal court in the District of Columbia earlier this month, Biden Justice Department prosecutors cited a terrorism sentencing enhancement to argue that Leo Brent Bozell IV, 44, should be incarcerated for 140 months.
Bozell was not convicted of terrorism, but rather in a non-jury trial last September a judge found him guilty of obstructing an official proceeding, destruction of government property, civil disorder, and assaulting an officer, along with some misdemeanors, according to a DOJ news release.
His conduct included breaching temporary barriers, such as bike racks, set up outside the Capitol building. Bozell then joined others in pushing through a police line, prosecutors said.
He then smashed in two windows of the Capitol and went inside, eventually making his way to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office.
In their sentencing memorandum, prosecutors contended his conduct on Jan. 6 fit the definition of terrorism since it was intended to intimate government officials and involved and resulted in damaged property and potential serious bodily injury.
Fortunately for Bozell, Judge John Bates, who oversaw the case, found the DOJ’s sentencing recommendation “untethered to the circumstances of this case,” The New York Times reported.
“As part of his ruling, Judge Bates determined that Mr. Bozell’s conduct on Jan. 6 technically fit the description needed to apply a so-called terrorism enhancement to his sentence. But the judge decided not to use that enhancement in coming up with the final penalty, saying that branding Mr. Bozell a domestic terrorist was excessively harsh,” the Times said.
Was the “Terrorism Enhancement” penalty designed to be used against American citizens?
On Friday, Bates instead sentenced Bozell to 45 months (just under four years) in prison and ordered him to pay $4,729 in damages.
Bozell’s father, L. Brent Bozell III, founder of the Media Research Center, responded to his son’s sentencing with a statement posted on X calling it a “travesty.”
The elder Bozell noted the complete disparity between the penalty meted out to his son and those who participated in the antifa and Black Lives Matter riots of 2020.
“Police stations were torched, and dozens of officers were injured as all manner of projectiles, from rocks to Molotov cocktails, were hurled at them. Dozens of people died. The damage was estimated at over $1.2 billion — the highest in history. And yet there was no outrage from the Justice Department,” he said.
I truly believe Judge John Bates is a fair judge, and a good man, but today’s judgment against my son is a complete travesty. In 2020, America was in flames as Antifa and BLM set fire to city after city – Seattle, Minneapolis, Portland, New York, St. Louis, Los Angeles,…
— Brent Bozell (@BrentBozell) May 17, 2024
Oregon’s KGW-TV reported in August 2020 that around 140 officers sustained injuries while protecting the Portland federal courthouse from the rioters.
In April 2021, Politico questioned how the leniency doled out to those who had been arrested and charged with crimes might impact the Jan. 6 defendants’ cases.
In other words, groups of defendants appeared similarly situated in terms of their conduct, and arguably, the Portland rioters were more violent toward officers, throwing fireworks and other objects at them and trying to blind them with high intensity lasers.
Protesters are now shooting fireworks at the federal courthouse
They have 6 warnings so far to cease the activity or face crowd control munitions
They are provoking federal officers pic.twitter.com/YbVQbbHfAA
— E (@ElijahSchaffer) July 24, 2020
However, many were offered deferred prosecution with no criminal record as long as they stayed out of trouble during a probationary period and completed community service, according to Politico.
By contrast the DOJ noted at the end of its news release about Leo Brent Bozell IV that over 1,400 individuals have been charged with crimes and that the “investigation remains ongoing.”
Bozell pointed out in the case of his son, “the ‘Justice’ Department tried relentlessly but unsuccessfully to pin a terrorism enhancement charge on him, thus equating my son, whose most serious crime ever was a traffic offense, to Osama bin Laden.”
Further, the DOJ also tried to force him to plead guilty to the “charge of obstruction — as unconstitutional a charge as there ever was, and one which is about to be tossed out by the Supreme Court,” Bozell said.
Based on oral arguments last month, a majority of the Supreme Court justices appear ready to reject the DOJ’s use of an obstruction statute intended to address destruction of documents, which are subject to official proceedings.
Defendants argued before the Supreme Court, the federal obstruction statute has nothing to do with their actions on Jan. 6.
The DOJ appeared to try to shoehorn the Sarbanes-Oxley provision to the Jan. 6 defendants because of the 20-year potential jail time it carries. A Supreme Court decision is expected by the end of next month.
Bozell concluded his son has been the subject of a “political prosecution” based on the harshness of sentencing.
“In Biden’s America, justice has no home if you are on the right,” Bozell said.
“Leo Brent Bozell IV carries his father’s name, and his father is a known conservative leader who is supporting President Trump in 2024,” he added.
“The criminal investigation into this corrupt Justice Department is long overdue,” Bozell contended.
Learn more about the DOJ’s treatment of Jan. 6 defendants by watching the new documentary film “The War on Truth,” produced by Nick Searcy.
