A federal judge sentenced Cesar Sayoc, the so-called MAGA bomber, to 20 years in prison Monday.
Sayoc, 57, pleaded guilty earlier this year to a spate of threatening pipe bombs that he sent to prominent Democrats across the country in the fall of 2018. Prosecutors charged Sayoc in October with sending 16 improvised explosive devices to former President Barack Obama; former Vice President Joe Biden; former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; former Attorney General Eric Holder; Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Kamala Harris of California; billionaire activist George Soros; former CIA Director John Brennan via CNN headquarters, and others.
Sayoc pleaded guilty in March to 65 counts relating to using a “weapon of mass destruction,” mailing explosives, and making threats. The mandatory minimum sentence was 10 years behind bars while the maximum punishment was life imprisonment.
This ruling comes after a weekend where 30 people died in mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.
Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York said Sayoc created a “torrent of fear” and a “climate of terror going on day after day for several weeks.”
Sayoc, whose attorneys painted him as infatuated with President Trump, covered the van he lived out of in pro-Trump stickers, attended Trump rallies, threatened Democrats and the media on Twitter, and sent pipe bombs to Democrats he saw as Trump’s political enemies. None of the devices exploded, and the prosecution and defense clashed over whether the devices were ever intended to work or not.
In the lead-up to sentencing, Sayoc’s defense team argued against a life sentence in court filings, pointing to Sayoc’s “cognitive limitations and severe learning disabilities” and painting a picture of sexual abuse in childhood, steroid dependency in adulthood, and financial ruin during the Great Recession which led to him living out of his van for a decade. Sayoc’s criminal and bizarre behavior began before Trump became president.
“In this darkness, Mr. Sayoc found light in Donald J. Trump,” Sayoc’s defense team said.
Sayoc’s lawyers said Sayoc “found the sense of community that he had been missing for so many years” in Trump’s fandom. They called Sayoc “enthusiastic and credulous” and said that “he believed outlandish reports in the news and on social media.”
And, his defense team said, “Sayoc thought that anti-Trump forces were trying to hurt him” which made him increasingly obsessive and angry.
“His paranoia bled into delusion and he came to believe that prominent Democrats were actively working to hurt him, other Trump supporters, and the country as a whole,” Sayoc’s lawyers said.
A mix of “delusional beliefs” and “large doses of steroids” led Sayoc to lash out on social media and “heightened paranoia and anger” pushed him to send pipe bombs, said Sayoc’s lawyers.
“In Mr. Sayoc’s mind, he was sending a hoax device, and he had no true grasp of the severity of his crimes or the potential ramifications of his actions,” Sayoc’s attorneys said.
On Monday, Rakoff condemned Sayoc’s actions, but concluded that Sayoc “was fully capable of constructing pipe bombs capable of exploding” and, because the devices were essentially inoperative, that was “in the court’s view, a conscious choice” to threaten his targets rather than a willful attempt to murder them.
Sayoc’s lawyers claimed he had been misled by online disinformation, that “he slowly became deranged by it.” And they also tried to pin blame on Trump’s rhetoric, saying it “contributed to Mr. Sayoc’s actions in this offense.”
Prosecutors told the court “the defendant’s campaign of terror was national in reach and extremely serious” as they argued that “even if the likelihood of explosions were remote, these IEDs were still dangerous.” They claimed that “these may not have been the most sophisticated bombs, but they did pose a danger.” And they said that Sayoc’s desire to “terrorize” and “silence” people warranted a life sentence.
Sayoc read a statement claiming he wished “more than anything that I could turn back time and take back what I did” and that “I feel the pain and suffering of these victims.”
Sayoc’s lawyers claimed in late July that the pipe bombs were merely “hoax devices” and that Sayoc never intended them to be operational. The prosecution pushed back on this in early August, saying Sayoc “refuses to accept full responsibility for his conduct.”
“Despite his guilty plea and his statements to the court — on two occasions — that he knew that the sixteen pipe bombs he constructed with explosives, pool chemicals, and glass shrapnel were capable of exploding and causing injury to persons and property, the defendant is now adamant that his bombs were a hoax,” prosecutors said.
