Man who sent pipe bombs to Trump critics is sentenced to 20 years

Cesar A Sayoc Jr, the fervent supporter of President Donald Trump who rattled the nation last fall when he sent homemade pipe bombs to former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats, was sentenced Monday to 20 years in prison.

Sayoc pleaded guilty in March to mailing 16 bombs to people he considered to be Trump’s enemies. The FBI said the devices were packed with powder from fireworks, fertilizer, a pool chemical and glass fragments that would function as shrapnel, but they would not have worked as designed.

In the end, the flaws in the bombs’ design were critical to a federal judge’s decision to give Sayoc 20 years in prison rather than the life sentence prosecutors requested. The judge, Jed S Rakoff of US District Court in Manhattan, said he had concluded Sayoc was capable of concocting a pipe bomb that could explode and had consciously chosen not to.

The lawyers argued in a recent court filing that Sayoc, 57, suffered from a long-untreated mental illness and drew inspiration from the president for his terror campaign.

Before he was sentenced, Sayoc read a handwritten statement, apologising. “I wish more than anything I could turn back time and take back what I did,” he said. “But I want you to know, your honour, with all my heart and soul, I feel the pain and suffering of these victims.”

Geoffrey S Berman, the US attorney in Manhattan, said after the sentencing that although “thankfully no one was hurt by his actions, Sayoc’s domestic terrorism challenged our nation’s cherished tradition of peaceful political discourse.”

Sayoc’s terror campaign and the frenzied investigation that followed seized the nation for two weeks in October. After a four-day manhunt, Sayoc was arrested outside an auto-parts store near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he was living in a decrepit white van that was plastered with bombastic stickers that glorified Trump and placed Obama and Clinton in red crosshairs.

Last fall, Sayoc’s lawyers wrote, the “slow-boil of Sayoc’s political obsessions and delusional beliefs” led him to build and send his 16 packages to 13 intended victims he considered to be Trump’s enemies.

Each device consisted of plastic pipe with a digital alarm clock and attached wires. An FBI explosives expert, Kevin D Finnerty, testified at the sentencing the devices would not have functioned as designed but were capable of exploding if mishandled.

© 2019 New York Times News Service