NC Proud Boys leader sentenced to prison for plotting a Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol
One of North Carolina’s most prominent figures in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol was sentenced to prison on Tuesday.
Charles Donohoe, a 35-year-old Marine from Kernersville, planned an attack by members of his Proud Boys group to stop the transfer of presidential power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden, federal prosecutors said.
Donohoe was sentenced to three years and four months in prison by Judge Timothy Kelly in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, court records show.
Donohoe, state president of the Proud Boys, a far-right, U.S. extremist group, pleaded guilty in June 2022 to the felony charges of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; and assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers, The Charlotte Observer reported at the time.
He was among at least 32 North Carolinians charged in the attack. A March 2022 indictment named him and five other Proud Boy members from around the country as being involved.
Donohoe was the first Proud Boy to plead guilty and promised to testify against his alleged co-conspirators as part of his plea, the Observer reported.
In court Tuesday, Donohoe apologized to his family, law-enforcement officers who defended the Capitol that day, and to “America as a whole,” The Associated Press reported.
“I knew what I was doing was illegal from the very moment those barricades got knocked down,” he said, according to the AP.
The 2022 indictment accused Donohoe and other named Proud Boys conspirators, including national chairman Enrique Tarrio, of plotting a Capitol assault in the weeks before Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington on the morning of Jan. 6.
Tarrio was sentenced in September to 22 years in prison after being convicted of seditious conspiracy charges and other felonies.
According to the indictment, the Proud Boy defendants and other members of the group were among the first to assault police to get into the Capitol.
Donohoe stayed outside the building but created encrypted messaging channels he and his fellow conspirators used, prosecutors said.
This story was originally published December 19, 2023 at 8:32 PM.