TAMPA, Fla. — A judge sentenced retired U.S. Army Special Forces member Jeremy Brown, who remains under investigation for his alleged involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, to at least seven years in prison for having illegal weapons and being in possession of a classified document.
U.S. District Judge Susan Bucklew sentenced Brown on Friday for possession of unregistered short-barrel firearms, possession of unregistered explosive grenades, improper storage of explosive grenades and retention of classified information, according to a Department of Justice news release.
The ex-Green Beret is to also serve three years of supervised release after his prison sentence.
Brown had an unregistered AR-15-style rifle, which was modified to have a 10-inch barrel, in his bedroom during an FBI search of his Tampa home in September 2021, the DOJ said.
Inside an RV — that the DOJ had previously reported he called "ground force one" in the lead-up to the Capitol attack — investigators say they also discovered a sawed-off shotgun and an ammunition vest containing two M-67 fragmentation grenades in its pockets. The grenades had originally been in possession of the Army, the department said, adding that his time in the Special Forces would have given him access to such weapons.
A classified "Trip Report" was located inside a briefcase in the RV, containing what the DOJ called "highly sensitive information about Department of Defense intelligence – gathering tactics, techniques, and procedures, including information about a human source that, if released, could have caused the source to be arrested, tortured, or killed."
Authorities arrested Brown in the fall of 2021 on knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted area and intending to impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of government business or official functions. An image in his case documents, published by the news outlet Reuters, indicated Brown was a self-described member of the Oath Keepers extremist group.
Federal Election Commission records earlier showed Brown filed to run as a Republican in 2021 in Florida's 14th Congressional District, which includes the city of Tampa. He failed to appear on the general election ballot having dropped out of the race months earlier.
He also ran a campaign last year from the Pinellas County Jail, where he's being held on a federal charge, for a Florida House seat. Brown lost in the general election having received 31 percent of the vote to Democrat Michele Rayner-Goolsby.
“The communities we serve can be assured by investigations such as this that the FBI and its law enforcement partners are working diligently and tirelessly to support the mission of protecting the American people and upholding the United States Constitution,” Special Agent in Charge David Walker of the FBI Tampa Field Office said in a statement.