Sen. Rand Paul’s attacker will be spending an extra eight months behind bars.
Rene Boucher, the Kentucky Republican’s neighbor, was sentenced Monday to the additional prison time after prosecutors argued that his previous 30-day stint and $10,000 fine for the assault was too lenient. After serving the prison time, Boucher will be on supervised release for 18 months.
Boucher pleaded guilty to assaulting Paul in March 2018. The senator suffered multiple rib fractures and underwent multiple treatments for pneumonia that resulted from the attack. He also had surgery from a hernia related to the assault.
During a virtual hearing on Monday, Paul said the attack sent him flying 10 feet in the air. He added that he is suffering “lifelong symptoms” from his injuries, according to NBC News.
“I don’t know what a night without pain is like or what a day without pain is like, so I do suffer from this,” Paul said. “This was no routine altercation. This was no sort of face-to-face, man-to-man thing.”
In January 2019, a jury in a civil case about the attack ruled in Paul’s favor and ordered Boucher to pay the senator $580,000 in damages. Boucher has denied that Paul’s political leanings factored into the assault.
“You get on the internet, and the hatred is so awful out there. Political differences, religious differences, and even day-to-day differences with the people who live around us. We’ve got to resolve these things peacefully. That’s a mark of America and our civilization, is not resolving things violently. The message from the jury, at least, was, ‘We’re just not going tolerate violence in our community,’” Paul said after the civil ruling.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Paul’s office for comment.
