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Justice Department exhibits depicting convicted Proud Boy Marc Bru; background photo trial exhibit with red arrow points toward Bru as he approaches police officers at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021./Inset: Social media profile and selfie posts shared by Bru contained in statement of offense.
Marc Bru, a convicted Proud Boy who joined up with members of the far-right group when they stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced to six years in prison on Wednesday but not without first unleashing a bitter tantrum and one that prosecutors said they fully expected.
First reported by Washington, D.C., CBS affiliate WUSA, Bru’s sentencing at the federal courthouse was the continuation of what has been a raucous affair for the 43-year-old as he has faced off with prosecutors and judges since his arrest more than two years ago.
The Washington state resident 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.
He was found guilty on seven counts, including both felonies and misdemeanors. Charges included: entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; entering and remaining in a gallery of Congress; disorderly conduct in a Capitol building; and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.
On Wednesday, as Boasberg prepared to sentence him to what would ultimately be 6 years — prosecutors had sought just over 7 years — Bru fumed, demanding the judge and attorneys for the Justice Department produce tax returns to him going back five years, WUSA reported.
For his final act, before he was hauled off to prison, Bru told the judge explicitly: “You could give me a hundred years and I’d do it all over again.”
When Boasberg repeated his words back to him, Bru left nothing to chance telling the judge it was in fact “correct,” that as he sat before him Wednesday, no matter the sentence imposed, he would do it all over again.
Bru’s defiance has been a running theme. Last July after he had missed court dates on no less than two occasions before his anticipated bench trial, he was arrested in Idaho and Montana for DUIs. NBC affiliate KTVH reported on the Montana episode. That was the second incident. It was around 1 a.m. and Bru had become stuck in a ditch when police showed up. He told them a truck had hit him and admitted to having warrants out for his arrest. He also admitted to having no license.
“Shortly before Bru’s July 17, 2023 trial date in this case, Bru absconded and defiantly boasted via Twitter that the government would have to come get him if it wanted him,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum this month. “Approximately a month later, it did.”
Meanwhile back in Washington, D.C., this week, in a 3-page notice from prosecutors obtained by Law&Crime, attorneys seemed ready for Bru’s meltdown at sentencing and warned Boasberg.
Bru, they wrote, is a regular caller to a vigil outside of the jail in Washington, D.C., which the Jan. 6 defendants refer to as their “Freedom Corner.” On Tuesday night before sentencing, prosecutors said Bru “informed his listeners that he had filed a motion demanding the Honorable James E. Boasberg and the undersigned lead prosecutor disclose the last five years of their tax records so that he could expose their alleged financial conflicts.”
Bru thundered on that if his orders were not met, he would “turn to the [court] marshals and command them to arrest the judge and the prosecutor for human trafficking” and he also promised to “put on a good show,” telling those listening to him: “Hope the tickets are worth the price.”
Roughly 24 hours before this call, Bru had made another “disquieting” remark, U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves wrote.
“Bru called in to the Freedom Corner vigil and informed the listeners that he had sent Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and former President Donald Trump his ‘affidavit’ accusing this court of financial crimes and human trafficking. He then warned that if the Speaker and former President ‘don’t f—— pull the trigger in a very short amount of time, I will make sure to start a nationwide prison protest. I am done.”
Bru, Graves wrote, likely intends to start a “prison riot, not a peaceful protest.” [Emphasis in italics original]
Representatives for Johnson and Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Bru marched on the Capitol with at least 20 Proud Boys on Jan. 6 and during the seditious conspiracy trial of Proud Boy leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and his co-defendants last year, prosecutors noted that Bru wasn’t far from barricades where convicted Proud Boys like Zachary Rehl and Ethan Nordean kicked off a significant breach.
In one video shown to jurors in that case last March, Bru was seen violently rocking gates as police scrambled to keep a growing mob at bay. Prosecutors dubbed him, and hundreds of other Proud Boys facing lesser charges but who joined Proud Boy leadership’s efforts to obstruct proceedings overall, a useful “tool” of the greater conspiracy to forcibly stop the transfer of power.
In this trial exhibit, Proud Boy Marc Bru appears in the mob outside of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, circled in red. Just below him, circled by prosecutors in green is convicted seditionist and former Proud Boy Ethan Nordean.
On Jan. 6, surveillance footage showed Bru shoving past barriers, screaming at police officers and making his way inside the Capitol where he further delayed efforts by police to clear the area by taking selfies and parading through the building.
After Jan. 6, prosecutors alleged Bru was interested in keeping up the fight.
In a 49-page sentencing memorandum filed by prosecutors on Jan. 17, they argued that he had “sought to buy gas masks in bulk, recruited others and made plans to lead a violent, armed insurrection to take over the government in Portland, Oregon.”
“Bru was arrested in this case before those plans could come to fruition,” they wrote.
