Cesar Sayoc, Pro-Trump Mail Bomber, Gets 20 Years In Prison

NEW YORK — The Brooklyn-born man who spread fear across the country by mailing bombs to critics of President Donald Trump will spend two decades behind bars.

U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff sentenced Sayoc to 20 years in prison Monday for mailing 16 explosive devices to 13 high-profile liberal targets — including former President Barack Obama and the actor Robert De Niro — in New York City and elsewhere last October.

After pleading guilty to 65 federal crimes in March, Sayoc said he never meant to hurt anyone and expressed remorse for sending the bombs. But federal prosecutors argued he deserved a lifetime prison sentence, as the devices could have been lethal regardless of his intentions.

"For two weeks, the defendant mailed bombs on a near-daily basis to government officials and private citizens because of their beliefs," prosecutors wrote in a court filing last week. "He hoped to harm those who held views he disliked. He hoped to silence public discourse and chill civic participation. He placed thousands at risk."

Sayoc mailed the dangerous packages last fall to prominent liberal politicans and activists at myriad locations including De Niro's Tribeca office and restaurant and CNN's Midtown office at Time Warner Center.

The longtime Florida resident and fervent Trump supporter had a history of attacking his targets on social media. Prosecutors pointed to a series of Facebook posts from 2011 and 2012 in which Sayoc ranted against Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder — to whom he also sent a bomb — using a misspelled racial slur.

A forensic analysis found the bombs did not have functional wiring but contained a mix of explosives, pool chemicals and glass that could have exploded with "additional heat, shock, or friction," prosecutors said in their letter.

Sayoc apologized for his actions and detailed a troubled past leading up to the bombings in his own letters to Rakoff. He told the judge he was sexually abused as a child, became addicted to steroids and suffered from depression, anxiety and "hearing voices." He also said he was "attacked by leftist radical groups" for his political views.

"I am not the same person, I was at the time of this nightmare happened in October 2018," he wrote in April, adding that he "lost control of myself & mental state" because of steroids.

But prosecutors argued Sayoc had grown more dangerous to the public as he got older. He amassed nine criminal convictions starting at age 29 and threatened to "blow up" a power company at age 40, they said. And he maintains the "hate-filled ideology" that spurred his two-week terrorist attack, prosecutors wrote.

Sayoc's crimes warranted a life sentence to "incapacitate the defendant, protect the public, and deter similar acts of domestic terrorism," prosecutors said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.