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Cesar Sayoc, Who Mailed Pipe Bombs to Trump Critics, Is Sentenced to 20 Years

Mr. Sayoc sent the bombs to prominent Democrats, setting off a frenzied investigation that unnerved the country before last year’s midterm elections.

Cesar A. Sayoc Jr., who pleaded guilty to sending explosive packages to several of President Trump’s critics, in a photo taken from social media.

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Cesar A. Sayoc Jr., the fervent supporter of President 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 on Monday to 20 years in prison.

Mr. Sayoc pleaded guilty in March to mailing 16 bombs to people he considered to be Mr. Trump’s enemies. The F.B.I. 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 Mr. Sayoc 20 years in prison rather than the life sentence prosecutors requested. The judge, Jed S. Rakoff of Federal District Court in Manhattan, said he had concluded that Mr. Sayoc, though no firearms expert, was capable of concocting a pipe bomb that could explode and had consciously chosen not to.

“He hated his victims,” the judge said. “He wished them no good, but he was not so lost as to wish them dead, at least not by his own hand.”

Though the timing was coincidental, the sentencing came as the nation was on edge after the weekend’s back-to-back mass shootings, one of which appeared to have been inspired by anti-immigrant rhetoric from right-wing pundits and politicians, including Mr. Trump.

On Monday morning, Mr. Trump gave a national address in which he denounced white supremacists and said hatred had no place in the country. He promised the government would do more to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.

Still, the president has a long history of making inflammatory statements not just about immigrants, but about his political opponents. Mr. Sayoc’s lawyers said their client was particularly susceptible to those ideas.

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Mr. SayocCredit...Broward County Sheriff's Office, via Associated Press

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

“He was a Donald Trump superfan,” they wrote.

During the sentencing, however, Judge Rakoff said Mr. Sayoc’s politics were “something of a sideshow.” Instead, the judge said the design flaws in the bombs — including timers that were not set to go off and fuse wiring that was inoperable — indicated that Mr. Sayoc had only intended to scare his victims, not harm them.

Before he was sentenced, Mr. Sayoc read a handwritten statement, apologizing. “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 honor, with all my heart and soul, I feel the pain and suffering of these victims.”

As the judge announced the sentence, Mr. Sayoc broke into sobs, resting his head in his hands clasped on the table before him. Then he looked up at the ceiling and mouthed, “Thank you.”

Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States 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.”

Mr. Sayoc’s lawyers, who are federal public defenders, had no comment.

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

Mr. Sayoc’s lawyers had urged Judge Rakoff to impose a prison sentence of 10 years, which would have been the mandatory minimum Mr. Sayoc faced, plus one month.

At the time of his arrest, they said, Mr. Sayoc was suffering from the untreated mental illness, compounded by excessive steroid use, and he had become increasingly obsessive, isolated and paranoid.

“In this darkness,” the lawyers wrote in a sentencing memo, “Mr. Sayoc found light in Donald J. Trump.”

Mr. Sayoc listened to Mr. Trump’s self-help books and championed him on social media. He watched Fox News religiously while working out at the gym.

“Because of Mr. Sayoc’s mental illness, this type of rhetoric deeply affected him because he so greatly admired the president,” one of Mr. Sayoc’s lawyers, Ian Marcus Amelkin, said in court. “It is impossible, I believe, to separate the political climate and his mental illness.”

Last fall, Mr. Sayoc’s lawyers wrote, the “slow-boil of Mr. Sayoc’s political obsessions and delusional beliefs” led him to build and send his 16 packages to 13 intended victims he considered to be Mr. Trump’s enemies. In Mr. Sayoc’s mind, the devices were “designed to look like pipe bombs,” his lawyers said, but they were a hoax to scare his targets.

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

Jane Kim, a prosecutor, said in court that because of Mr. Sayoc’s attacks, hundreds of law enforcement officers were mobilized around the country, thousands of postal employees were on alert for suspicious packages, buildings and mail facilities were evacuated and schools were ordered to shelter in place.

“The defendant’s campaign of terror was national in reach and extremely serious,” she said.

She added that had Mr. Sayoc intended the bombs to be hoaxes, he could have packed them with sand, but he chose to use glass fragments.

Ms. Kim also addressed the defense’s argument that shifted blame to Mr. Trump. “With respect to some of the excuses that the defendant has advanced about politics and politicians, the government would submit that politics cannot justify a terrorist attack,” she said. “Politics here cannot justify 16 bombs being mailed.”

When Mr. Sayoc pleaded guilty in court, he listed his intended victims. In addition to Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, they included former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.; Senator Kamala Harris, a California Democrat; Senator Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat; George Soros, a billionaire Democratic donor; and John O. Brennan, a former C.I.A. director.

The list also included Representative Maxine Waters, a California Democrat; former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.; Tom Steyer, a prominent Democratic donor; James R. Clapper Jr., a former director of national intelligence; the actor Robert De Niro; and CNN.

Prosecutors had also said Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, was a victim of Mr. Sayoc’s campaign; he falsely listed her as the return address on his packages.

After the sentencing, Ms. Wasserman Schultz said in a statement that Mr. Sayoc “was admittedly inspired by the president’s hateful rhetoric.”

“This president’s words have consequences,” she said.

Benjamin Weiser is a reporter covering the Manhattan federal courts. He has long covered criminal justice, both as a beat and investigative reporter. Before joining The Times in 1997, he worked at The Washington Post. More about Benjamin Weiser

Ali Watkins is a reporter on the Metro Desk, covering courts and social services. Previously, she covered national security in Washington for The Times, BuzzFeed and McClatchy Newspapers. More about Ali Watkins

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 17 of the New York edition with the headline: Man Who Sent Pipe Bombs to Trump Critics Is Sentenced to 20 Years . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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