When did Napa man decide he was sorry for plot to bomb Democratic HQ in Sacramento? | Opinion

We are all sorry when we do something wrong and then fail to get away with that something.

But we don’t all plot to commit political violence or assemble an arsenal we’re planning to use to bomb a building and then tell authorities that we never intended to get caught.

In a way, you have to admire the breathtaking honesty of 45-year-old Napa auto mechanic Ian Benjamin Rogers’ initial acknowledgment that this was his regret: “I feel very bad for putting myself in a bad situation that allowed the government to destroy my life.” Doubtless he does.

Along with his co-defendant, 37-year-old Jarrod Copeland, who had recently moved to Sacramento from Vallejo in 2020, Rogers is one of the two Donald Trump supporters accused of plotting to firebomb Sacramento’s state Democratic headquarters building shortly after President Joe Biden’s election.

Rogers told federal probation officials, “I accept responsibility for having in my possession illegal weapons and thinking about burning down a building in a drunken state.”

Only, he did a lot more than think about it, which is not illegal. And drunkenly plotting is still plotting. Rogers and Copeland have acknowledged guilt in accepting a plea deal.

Court records say authorities seized 49 weapons, including machine guns and bombs and zip ties, from the two. Both men have been charged with conspiracy to destroy a building, possession of destructive devices and machine guns and obstruction of justice.

They started planning on Nov. 25, 2020, hoping to retaliate against Biden’s victory, their indictment says. By Nov. 29, “they had identified the John L. Burton Democratic Headquarters in Sacramento, California, as their first target and made plans to attack it using incendiary devices. Rogers and Copeland believed that the attacks would start what they called a ‘movement.’ They discussed the attack in detail and on numerous occasions.”

Rogers ended one online conversation with Copeland by saying that after Inauguration Day, “we go to war.”

So how does he deserve the leniency that he’s begging for now?

Impossible to say, since nowhere in the four-page letter he recently wrote to Senior U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, who will sentence the two in federal court in San Francisco on March 1, does he say what he’s learned, how he’s changed or when he became sorry for anyone but himself.

“I am begging you for a second chance,” Rogers wrote. “And, I’m begging you to believe me when I tell you that I know I was wrong, that I made a humongous mistake, and that I deserve to be punished. But, I’m also begging you for a chance to redeem myself and begging you to accept the plea agreement” of up to nine years, “so that after I pay a huge price I can come out of prison and resume being a law-abiding, productive member of the community, a loving husband to my wife, and a doting father to my two precious sons.”

Maybe if we collectively had not written about so many people who served far longer for far less, we would be more sympathetic.

Yet we still don’t know how remorseful he is because missing from the four-page letter was any description of how Rogers has grown in understanding since texting Copeland, “I want to blow up a democrat building bad.”

That was less than a week after the Jan. 6 insurrection, and a little over a week before the inauguration that he was hoping would be the first day of a civil war.

Rogers’ attorney, Colin Cooper, has argued that his client was a victim of excessive beer drinking, but how is he a victim at all, other than of Trump’s disinformation?

“His regret was that his conduct led to his arrest and disclosure of his activities,” Judge Breyer said during the September hearing. “And now the government was taking action against him. That’s his regret. Putting it another way, he regrets he was caught. I have to say, in 23 years I’ve never seen that type of statement. I’ve never seen a defendant come in and say I regret I was caught.”

Rogers wrote in his letter to the judge that while he doesn’t blame him for that misimpression, “nothing could be further from the truth. I made a colossal mistake owning illegal firearms, illegal explosives and communicating via text message with my co-defendant.” Isn’t he saying he should have been more careful in his communications?

“At the time, I believed the election was stolen. At the time, I believed things said by the Trump administration. At the time, I was in a dark place in my life and I was abusing alcohol and acting out, in part, because of it. I was wrong in my thinking.”

But again, he doesn’t say when his thinking changed, or how, or what he thinks now. So to us, Breyer’s first impression seems to still hold true.