WASHINGTON (NEWSnet/AP) — A former leader of Proud Boys was sentenced on Tuesday to more than three years in prison for joining a plot to attack the U.S. Capitol in 2021.

Charles Donohoe is the second Proud Boy to plead guilty to conspiracy with other members of the group to obstruct the Jan. 6, 2021, session of Congress that certified  Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

Donohoe, 35, of Kernersville, North Carolina, apologized to his family, law-enforcement officers who guarded the Capitol on Jan. 6 and “America as a whole” for his actions.

“I knew what I was doing was illegal from the very moment those barricades got knocked down,” he said.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly sentenced him to three years and four months in prison. Donohoe could be eligible for release in a month or two because he gets credit for jail time he already has served since his  arrest  in March 2021.

The judge said Donohoe seems to be doing everything in his power to make amends for his crime.

 

“I think you’ve got all the ingredients here to put this behind you,” Kelly said.

Donohoe was president of a local Proud Boys chapter in North Carolina. He was a lieutenant of former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison.

Donohoe agreed to cooperate with federal authorities when he pleaded guilty in April 2020 to two felony counts: conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and assaulting, resisting or impeding police. But he wasn’t called to testify at the trial of Tarrio and other Proud Boys earlier this year.

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