A federal judge on Friday sentenced the son and grandson of prominent American conservative media figures to nearly four years in prison, saying Leo Brent Bozell IV led the charge of an angry mob at multiple key points in the
Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack and lied at trial to cover up his actions.
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Bozell broke through police lines guarding a northwest staircase, smashed windows through which hundreds of rioters entered the Capitol’s west side, then forced open its Rotunda doors from inside, allowing in hundreds more on the building’s east side. He raided an office of then-Speaker Nancy A. Pelosi (D-Calif.) and redirected a security camera to hide intruders’ actions in the Senate floor and gallery.
U.S. District Judge John D. Bates agreed with prosecutor Ashley Akers, who said that “without rioters like Mr. Bozell, this riot would not have been successful,” and that the defendant facilitated the action of hundreds of others.
While the judge likened Bozell’s conduct to that of Proud Boys’ member
Dominic Pezzola and Texas Three Percenters recruiter
Guy Reffitt — who similarly spearheaded rioters behind them to break into the building and overwhelm police — the 45-month sentence he handed Bozell was only a third of the nearly 12 years sought by prosecutors and years less than what
Pezzola and Reffitt received.
The judge, a George H.W. Bush appointee, also rejected prosecutors’ unusual request for a terrorism enhancement for Bozell. Bates said that Bozell, a home improvement sales manager and father of three, should not carry the label of a “domestic terrorist” for life. Doing so “grossly overstated” his culpability, and his conduct did not rank among the “
top five or six” Jan. 6 defendants such as Proud Boys convicted of seditious conspiracy.
Still, the judge said Bozell’s brazen lies on the witness stand at trial contradicted video evidence, common sense and sentencing statements from supporters attesting to his good character and community influence. “What happened on Jan. 6 is no way to express political beliefs,” the judge concluded.
Bozell, 44, of Palmyra, Pa., was
convicted after a bench trial in September of 10 counts, including felony charges of assaulting police, rioting, destroying government property and obstructing Congress’s confirmation of the election.
Prosecutors sought one of the longest Jan. 6 sentences for Bozell, saying his crime met the federal statutory definition of terrorism by seeking to stop or intimidate Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 election “through the planned, threatened, and actual use of force.”
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“He was so determined to advance his political goals … that he ransacked the building with others, and he did so through force,” Akers said.
For a week before the breach, Bozell texted about taking the Capitol and hanging traitors, Akers said. Afterward, he like other participants tried to
blame “antifa” and police for letting rioters in, despite his firsthand role in events. He also encouraged his brother to get him to persuade their father to retract his public condemnation of violence on Jan. 6.
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Bozell is the grandnephew of William F. Buckley Jr., founder of the National Review and a leading conservative intellectual. His father is the founder of a group of right-wing news outlets, including the Media Research Center, NewsBusters and CNSNews. Bozell’s grandfather
L. Brent Bozell Jr. was a speechwriter for Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.), ghostwriter for 1964 GOP presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, and a prominent voice for conservative American Catholicism.
Bozell Jr. helped organize the first antiabortion march on Washington in June 1970 before he was arrested at another clinic demonstration and given a suspended sentence for unlawful entry, destruction of property and assaulting a police officer with a five-foot wooden cross.
Defense attorneys asked for no more than three years in prison for Bozell IV, who is also known as “Zeeker,” saying any longer would be devastating for his wife and three school-age daughters.
Bozell “is a good person who did a terrible thing,” attorney Eric Snyder said. Bozell regrets his decisions and is ashamed of his actions, and while he had believed that the election was “rigged,” he now accepts that Biden is president, his attorney said.
In a statement to the court and onlookers, which included his wife and parents, Bozell apologized to D.C. and Capitol Police, lawmakers and congressional staff. He also apologized to “the people of D.C.," where he said he believed he was no longer welcome but would “go door-to-door and apologize” if he could for trashing what he said was the city that raised him.
“It’s all my fault,” he said to his family. “I put a stain on my family forever.”
In one of 24 letters from supporters filed to the court, the defendant’s father, Leo Brent Bozell III, said his son is a “man of peace” who made a mistake. But he criticized prosecutors for seeking the terrorism enhancement.
“I have remained silent for the past 3½ years because I didn’t want to tip the apple cart of justice. But given what I saw in the trial, and more importantly learning about this terrorism enhancement, I no longer can. I believe there is more at play here,” Bozell III wrote. “I am not pleading my son’s innocence, only that his punishment match the crime.”
