Two men who discussed blowing up the Democratic headquarters in Sacramento in the wake of the 2020 election were sentenced to prison Wednesday, the US attorney’s office for the Northern District of California told CNN.
Ian Rogers of Napa, California, was sentenced to nine years in prison after pleading guilty in 2022 to a conspiracy charge and additional weapons violations, according to the US attorney’s office.
Jarrod Copeland of Vallejo, California, meanwhile, was sentenced to four and a half years in prison after pleading guilty to a conspiracy charge and an additional count of destruction of records.
Rogers is a “decent man, father and husband” and will pay a “supremely big price” for his actions, his attorney Colin Cooper told CNN.
“He has never been in trouble before, this is his first conviction,” Cooper said. “He has spent two years in custody so far because of his wrongdoing and he will come out of it a better person.”
CNN has reached out to Copeland’s attorney for comment.
Rogers and Copeland admitted in plea agreements that “they conspired together between November 2020 and January 2021 to destroy the John L. Burton Democratic Headquarters in Sacramento” and planned to throw cans of gasoline into the building and ignite it, the US attorney’s office said in a previous news release.
“The defendants in this case admitted that they intended to destroy the headquarters of a political organization by firebombing it,” US Attorney Stephanie Hinds said in a statement Wednesday. “Their decision to ‘go to war’ was based on their thought that they would rather destroy their political opponents’ building than acknowledge they lost an election and rely on the political process to make change.”
“The defendants will have to reflect on the fact that resorting to violence is not an acceptable means of making political change in our democracy” and that prosecution awaits those who “attempt to supplant the political process with fear and violence,” she said.
Source: www.cnn.com