2 sentenced in plot to bomb state Dem HQ
Two Bay Area men who admitted they were so angry about the results of the 2020 presidential election that they plotted to bomb the state Democratic headquarters in Sacramento have been sentenced to federal prison.
Ian Benjamin Rogers, 46, of Napa was sentenced Tuesday to nine years in prison by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco. Co-defendant Jarrod Copeland, 39, of Vallejo was sentenced to 4½ years. Both men had pleaded guilty to conspiring to destroy the downtown building, and Rogers also pleaded guilty to possessing pipe bombs and a machine gun that were found in his home.
Rogers also pleaded guilty in state court to charges of illegally possessing numerous firearms and has been sentenced to 12 years in prison, said his attorney, Colin Cooper. He said Rogers, with good behavior in prison, could gain release in less than seven years. He has been in custody since his arrest in January 2021, and Copeland since July 2021.
Prosecutors said the two men exchanged encrypted text messages, starting in November 2020, expressing outrage at the announcement of Donald Trump’s defeat and making plans to take revenge, starting with an attack on the John L.
Burton Democratic Headquarters.
“I want to blow up a democrat building bad,” Rogers told Copeland in January 2021, and Copeland responded, “Plan attack,” prosecutors said. They also said Rogers told Copeland they would “go to war” after the Jan. 20 inauguration of President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
U.S. Attorney Stephanie Hinds said officers who searched Rogers’ home and business found 45 to 50 firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition and five pipe bombs, which Rogers admitted he had assembled.
The two men evidently decided “they would rather destroy their political opponents’ building than acknowledge they lost an election and rely on the political process to make change,” Hinds said in a statement. “Ian Rogers and Jarrod Copeland will now have plenty of time to reflect on the fact that resorting to violence is not an acceptable means of making change in our democratic society.”
At Tuesday’s hearing, Breyer said the crimes were “an act of terrorism” that was prevented by “the intervention of law enforcement.” He said the evidence shows “there was a plan, a design, an opportunity and ability to carry out the firebombing of the Democratic headquarters.”
But Cooper, Rogers’ lawyer, said Wednesday the messages were just drunken, “idiotic” exchanges and that Rogers had never planned to use the pipe bombs.
In a court filing asking for a seven-year sentence, Cooper said Rogers had no criminal record, had worked in the auto repair business for more than three decades and was “ashamed of his conduct but willing to acknowledge it in order to never repeat it.”
Rogers’ wife, Yuliia, who met him in 2019 while he was visiting her native Ukraine, said in a letter to the court that he “will never harm anyone.”
Copeland’s attorney, John Ambrosio, said Wednesday that his client “accepted full responsibility for his crimes. He is overwhelmed with guilt and feelings of regret.”