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

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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.

Though the timing was a 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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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.

In court on Monday, Mr. Sayoc appeared to struggle with emotion as he read from a handwritten statement before sentencing. “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.”

Judge Jed S. Rakoff of Federal District Court in Manhattan 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.

Judge Rakoff said he had concluded that Mr. Sayoc, though no firearms expert, was capable of concocting a pipe bomb that could explode. His decision not to was a conscious choice, the judge said.

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, who are federal public defenders, had asked 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, “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.

Their arguments that Mr. Sayoc was at least partially motivated by an adoration for Mr. Trump were filed in court on July 22, two weeks before a gunman killed 20 people in a Walmart in El Paso, Tex. The gunman had posted a manifesto online that seemed to be inspired in part by the president’s rhetoric denouncing undocumented immigrants.

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,” they said, but they were a hoax to scare his targets.

“He did not actually want to kill or physically injure anyone,” they said, “and he did not think that the devices were capable of exploding.”

Each device consisted of plastic pipe with a digital alarm clock and attached wires, Mr. Sayoc told Judge Rakoff in March as he pleaded guilty to 65 counts, including using a weapon of mass destruction and interstate transportation of an explosive.

Prosecutors in the office of Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States attorney in Manhattan, had sought a life sentence for Mr. Sayoc.

Although the F.B.I. had found the devices “would not have functioned as a result of their design,” they were nevertheless capable of exploding and causing injuries, prosecutors wrote.

“Left alone, the volatile mixture of chemicals, fuels, oxidizers, and glass shards the defendant placed within each pipe could have created enough friction to detonate,” the government said. “Additional heat, shock, or friction — from, for example, transporting, handling, or dissembling the devices — could have also detonated the devices.”

Prosecutors said the devices “were dangerous, capable of causing extensive harm, and responsible for shutting down parts of several major metropolitan areas, including train stations, schools and postal facilities.”

The significance of the glass shards could not be understated, the government added, as an indicator of Mr. Sayoc’s criminal intent. “There is no reason to pack fragmentation into an explosive device other than to maximize the likelihood that the bomb will cause injury,” prosecutors wrote.

The government dismissed the defense’s attempt to “deflect responsibility onto just about everyone else,” including Mr. Trump, Fox News, depression, social media, steroids and politics, prosecutors wrote.

“These excuses are unpersuasive,” the government said. “Millions of people watch the news, hold strong political views, and experience personal challenges. Only the defendant constructed 16 pipe bombs packed with explosives and glass shrapnel and mailed them across the country.”

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.

In court on Monday, Mr. Sayoc said he regretted the fear he had caused his intended victims.

“I will be apologizing to them for the rest of my life,” he said.

Some people were sent more than one device. Mr. Sayoc, for example, had mailed one pipe bomb to Mr. Biden’s personal address in Wilmington, Del., and another to an assisted living facility in Wilmington that Mr. Biden had once visited, the government said.