Attorneys for accused “MAGA bomber” Cesar Sayoc Jr., who faces life behind bars for shipping bomb-like devices to prominent Democrats last year, say that he should receive no more than 10 years and one month in prison for sending what they claim he intended to be hoax devices.

In papers filed on Monday evening, public defenders representing Sayoc, 57, note that the FBI released a report last week stating that the devices Sayoc sent to 13 targets “were not functional as bombs” and that no one was hurt. He sent what he thought were duds after months of suffering from “delusional” beliefs and using copious amounts of steroids, the attorneys argue.

“In Mr. Sayoc’s mind, he was sending a hoax device, and he had no true grasp of the severity of his crimes or the potential ramifications of his actions,” the attorneys wrote. Sayoc faces a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence and is scheduled to be sentenced by Manhattan federal court Judge Jed Rakoff on Aug. 5.

They also argue that Sayoc is an outsize fan of President Donald Trump — and that he “became increasingly obsessive, paranoid, and angry” in the months leading up to the 2018 midterm elections, believing that anti-Trump forces had vandalized a “decrepit and cramped” van he was living in at the time that was plastered with pro-Trump messages and images.

“He believed stories shared on Facebook that Trump supporters were being beaten in the streets,” wrote Sayoc’s attorneys from the Federal Defenders of New York. “He came to believe that he was being personally targeted for supporting Trump.”

Sayoc’s steroid use exacerbated his “anxiety and paranoia,” the attorneys say. The attorneys also describe a hardscrabble past for Sayoc — he was sexually abused in Catholic school while he was a preteen, struggled in school throughout his life and turned his back on a chance to play soccer at the University of Central Florida on a scholarship because he had a panic attack at the campus.

Sayoc began working in strip clubs in the 1990s — first as a bouncer, then later as a dancer — and started taking steroids to keep muscle-bound, court papers state.

In papers filed late Monday, prosecutors say that District Judge Jed Rakoff of Manhattan federal court should instead give Sayoc a life sentence, arguing that he sent the devices with the intent to “injure and silence” his targets — and that, while the FBI determine that the devices would not have functioned as they were designed, they were still dangerous and that he loaded the devices with pool shock and glass shards in an effort to maximize the damage.

Prosecutors also said that Sayoc’s statement that he sent the devices as a hoax was “simply false.”

“Deficient as the defendant may be as a bomb maker, hoaxes do not involve real explosives, real shards of glass, and real toxic chemicals, as the defendant’s IEDs did,” the prosecutors said in their papers.