WASHINGTON — A would-be social media influencer who helped breach the Senate gallery by engaging with a law enforcement officer and then jumped onto the floor of the Senate and sat in the vice president's seat was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison Wednesday.
Bruno Cua was an 18-year-old high school senior who'd traveled to the nation's capital with his parents when he entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Cua, now 21, had filled his social media account with posts about the need to storm the Capitol and commit violence unless supporters of then-President Donald Trump got their way and overturned the election.
“This is what happens when you piss off patriots! Hey! Where are the swamp rats hiding?!” he said as he walked around the Capitol and checked doors. “Where are the swamp rats hiding at?”
Cua is among the youngest Jan. 6 defendants charged in relation to the Capitol attack. He was found guilty in February of obstruction of an official proceeding and assaulting, resisting or impeding officers.
Both of his parents — Joseph Cua and Alise Cua — had indicated they were embarrassed that they'd fallen for Trump's lies about the 2020 election. Bruno Cua said Wednesday that he was embarrassed, too.
"I falsely believed that the election was stolen," he said.
Cua said that what he did was "stupid" and that he was "ashamed" to have participated in what could only be described as "an attack on our democracy."
U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss said he was factoring in Bruno Cua's "youth and immaturity," along with the more than two years he served on what was effectively home detention, in landing on a sentence that was significantly below the guidelines. Federal prosecutors initially sought more than 4.5 years in federal prison.
“Cua appears to have had every advantage in life and many choices other than to attack the seat of our government," they wrote. "Cua’s crimes were not motivated by poverty or need and that sets him apart from many criminal defendants appearing in this courthouse."
Defense attorneys called Cua an "impressionable eighteen-year-old kid who was in the middle of finishing his online coursework to graduate from high school" who never lived away from his parents until he was jailed after his arrest, serving about 40 days of incarceration until he was released on strict conditions.
In a letter to the judge, Cua said he was now "horrified" by the statements he made on social media.
"I am in shock I wrote those things and decided it was acceptable to post them or send them in messages to other people. People I don’t know look me up and immediately read about them. It’s painful and embarrassing. What I said doesn’t even align with my faith. It’s so backwards and twisted from how I’m called to act as a Christian."
Cua's attorneys said his social media posts and actions on Jan. 6 "should be viewed in the context of Bruno’s overarching goal — to develop a large social media following in the hopes of monetizing his accounts, including on YouTube," and that his "interest in developing a robust social media following is not uncommon among young people these days."
Cua said in his letter that his social media presence was not an accurate representation of who he really was.
"It was like taking my thoughts and blowing them up to try to get views. It was all about the views. I don’t really know what I was thinking or doing," he wrote. "It was definitely crazy. Some of the political ideas I would state, I do believe them, but not on the level I posted. I could have a calm conversation with people about this, and be reasonable, but on media it sounds like I’m screaming. I feel like if I could’ve taken 30 second[s] to just stop and re-read everything, a lot of those probably wouldn’t have been posted."
In court Wednesday, Cua said that he no longer aspired to have a career in social media and that he'd made a "foolish" mistake.
"I don't want to be in the public eye," he said, adding that he'd talked to his youth group about impulse control and issues with social media. "I put myself in this situation."
A supporter of Cua's wrote to the judge that Cua “was baffled because he had only done what the grownups, people he respected and believed, told him was the right thing to do, take back our country for the sake of democracy."
“Bruno believed what the adults were telling him was true. These adults included his parents, Fox News, and social media. Bruno was told that Trump won the election, the presidency had been stolen from Trump, and it was Bruno’s patriotic duty to join forces and take the election back.”
More than 1,000 people have been arrested in connection with the Capitol attack, and hundreds of additional rioters have been identified. More than 300 people have been sentenced to terms of incarceration.
CORRECTION (July 26, 2023, 7:45 p.m. ET): A photo caption in a previous version of this article misstated where Bruno Cua was pictured on Jan. 6, 2021. It pictured him in the Senate, not the House.