The son of Brent Bozell, a conservative commentator, has been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol after being identified by wearing a sweatshirt from the Christian high school where he once worked as a girls basketball coach, court records show.
Leo Brent Bozell IV — whose father’s full name is Leo Brent Bozell III — is accused of entering a restricted government building, obstructing an official proceeding and disorderly conduct, according to a complaint filed in Federal District Court in Washington on Tuesday.
The court documents include several screenshots of the younger Mr. Bozell at various locations inside the Senate chamber, where he lingered, without a mask, for about ten minutes. He is seen chatting on his phone, and, at one point, appears to be repositioning a C-SPAN camera in the chamber’s upper gallery.
Mr. Bozell’s father is a high-profile right-wing activist known for infusing his politics with Christian values. He founded the Parents Television Council in 1995 to protect young people from what he saw as the morally degrading effect of popular culture.
While he has expressed sympathy with the frustrations expressed by former President Donald J. Trump’s supporters, the elder Mr. Bozell has criticized the Capitol attack in unequivocal terms.
“One element went forward in lawlessness and it’s done tremendous damage to everyone else,” he told Fox News. “I think it’s absolutely wrong.”
Birth records, retrieved through Ancestry.com, show that the younger Mr. Bozell was born in 1979 to Brent Bozell and Norma Petruccione, who has been identified as the elder Mr. Bozell’s wife in news accounts over the years.
Messages left for the elder Mr. Bozell were not immediately returned. The court documents did not provide information about the younger Mr. Bozell’s legal representation.
A witness watching video of the riot was able to identify the younger Mr. Bozell, who goes by the nicknames “Zeek” or “Zeeker,” after noticing that he was wearing a blue sweatshirt emblazoned with “Hershey Christian Academy,” a small parochial school located near Harrisburg, Penn., according to the complaint.
“Bozell stopped being the girls’ basketball coach in March 2020, as the team could no longer practice, or play games, due to the Covid-19 pandemic,” the witness told an F.B.I. agent.
