Marc Bru (U.S. Attorney’s Office)
A federal judge reduced the prison sentence for a convicted Jan. 6 rioter and Proud Boy member from Washington state who had a history of berating and insulting him during proceedings.
Marc Anthony Bru, 44, had his prison sentence reduced by one year due to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling limiting the government’s use of a federal obstruction law. Bru was originally sentenced in January to 72 months — or six years — in prison and 36 months of supervised release, as well as a fine of $7,946 and $2,000 in restitution, by Chief U.S. District Chief Judge James E. Boasberg. Bru was convicted of obstruction, civil disorder, and five misdemeanor charges following a bench trial before Boasberg on Oct. 3, 2023.
The resentencing comes after Bru disrupted the court, including insulting Boasberg, a Barack Obama appointee, during his original sentencing. Bru did not repeat similar insults at Friday’s hearing, but told Boasberg that adding more time to his sentence “is not that much of a deterrent,” The Associated Press reported.
In the government’s supplemental sentencing memorandum seeking the same 72 months of imprisonment that Bru initially received, prosecutors said it’s the appropriate punishment for a man they said rioted at the Capitol and planned to lead an armed insurrection to take over the government in Portland, Oregon. They said he also absconded in his Jan. 6 case while pending trial.
Bru tried to make a mockery of the trial proceeding, prosecutors said. After he was convicted, he spread disinformation, casting himself as a victim of political persecution and making bombastic, threatening statements in public forums, they added.
“Most alarmingly, in the two days before his sentencing hearing, Bru stated that he intended to ‘command’ the U.S. Marshals to arrest Chief Judge James E. Boasberg and the undersigned lead prosecutor for ‘human trafficking’ at his sentencing if they did not comply with his demands,” prosecutors wrote. “And he warned that if the Speaker of the House and the then-former President didn’t ‘f—ing pull the trigger in a very short amount of time,’ he would start a nationwide prison riot.”
The statements prompted the court to bring additional U.S. Marshals for security during his first sentencing hearing. During the hearing, Bru was disrespectful, interrupting the government and the Court throughout the proceeding, officials said.
He accused the Court of running an illegal, fraudulent “f—ing kangaroo court” and called Boasberg a “clown.”
He blamed the government for causing the two DUIs he obtained while on pretrial release. And he called the undersigned lead prosecutor “despicable and repugnant.”
When allowed to speak, Bru defiantly and proudly said, “You can give me a hundred years, and I would do it all over again.”
In his sentencing memo, Bru’s public defender, Ben W. Muse, asked the Court to adhere to the six-to-12-month imprisonment guidelines, saying he has no criminal history and wasn’t violent that day.
“He went to the Capitol grounds on January 6 to protest the results of the presidential election that he believed were secured through fraud,” Muse wrote.
Muse said he stood in the crowd on the West Plaza and shouted at the police. He briefly resisted law enforcement’s efforts to force the growing crowd back from the Capitol with bike racks by leaning against the advancing rack for several seconds. Then, he followed other protesters through open doors into the Capitol, where he remained inside for 15 minutes.
“In sum, Bru engaged in civil disobedience in a boisterous but non-violent manner,” Muse wrote. “As he has proclaimed, he would do so again because he sincerely believed the claims of President Trump and his supporters that the presidential election was ‘rigged,’ and the survival of democracy was at stake. His actions should be viewed for what they are and not conflated with those of other violent bad actors.”
Muse added that his actions following his arrest “frustrated the criminal process at several points,” mainly because he felt he and other Jan. 6 defendants were being treated differently as a class than other protesters who have engaged in disruptive acts of civil disobedience at the Capitol or in different cities around the country. But this being the case, his behavior was not, as the government contends, worthy of the 72-month sentence imposed by the Court.”
As Law&Crime reported, he considers himself a “sovereign citizen” and reportedly told U.S. District Chief Judge James Boasberg and federal prosecutors at the end of his bench trial that they were “outside of his jurisdiction” and that the court had committed “war crimes” against him as well as “trafficked” him.
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