Proud Boys organizer from Florida seeking pardon from President-elect Donald Trump, attorney says

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Published  November 11, 2024 8:23pm EST
FOX 35 Orlando
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Proud Boys organizer to seek pardon for Jan. 6

Proud Boys organizer and Ormond Beach, Florida native Joe Biggs is chipping away at a 17-year-prison sentence for his role on January 6th.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Proud Boys organizer and Ormond Beach, Florida native Joe Biggs is chipping away at a 17-year-prison sentence for his role on January 6th.

Biggs’ attorney, Norm Pattis, is writing to President-Elect Donald Trump, saying it’s in the public interest to commute Biggs’ sentence.

And he says, this request isn’t coming out of nowhere. 

"There's been a suggestion that his transition team is beginning to create an infrastructure to evaluate these claims," said Biggs. "We intend to put them to the test this week."

Trump was asked about pardons before he was even elected.

"If they’re innocent, I would pardon them," Trump said. When reminded the insurrectionists had been convicted, the 45th president answered, "Well, they were convicted by a very tough system." 

The Counter-terrorism Section of the National Security Division says Biggs opposed the lawful transfer of power by force, tearing down a fence separating the rioters from law enforcement, and then breaking his way into the Capitol building.

Inside, he recorded himself saying that he’d gone through every barricade, and that he was taking the Capitol back.

Before the riot, he’d posted on social media saying it was time for war, and helped coordinate the rioters’ plan in D.C. 

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"The notion that Mr. Biggs is some sort of domestic terrorism that should sit behind bars for 17 years is a chilling message to everyone. And that is you ought not to write patriotic hyperbole and then attend a protest, because if you do, an ambitious prosecutor is going to turn your words into circumstantial evidence of intent to commit a crime," said Pattis. "And that's just un-American."

Pattis is also working on an appeal of Biggs’ sentence, but he’s hoping he won’t have to.

That filing would come sometime next year, whereas a pardon from Trump, he says, could be.

"At his earliest opportunity, which would probably be January 21st," Pattis said.

Experts believe that could be what happens the day Trump takes office.

"Trump is the president, and in the United States, the president basically controls prosecutions," said Mark A. Graber of the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law.

Pattis is also writing letters requesting pardons for Dominic Pezzola and Zachary Rehl, two Proud Boys who were listed on the indictment as Biggs.

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