Proud Boys: Ex-leader found guilty of Jan 6 seditious conspiracy
US prosecutors allege far-right group members acted as “Trump’s army” during the January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol.
Former leader of the far-right Proud Boys group, Enrique Tarrio, and three other deputies have been found guilty of seditious conspiracy in an alleged plot to attack the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and prevent a peaceful transfer of power.
A jury in Washington, D.C. on Thursday handed down the guilty verdict against Tarrio, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl.
However, the jurors were unable to reach a verdict on seditious conspiracy — a relatively rare charge that carries up to 20 years in prison — against a fifth defendant, Dominic Pezzola.
All five men were also found guilty of a range of lesser crimes, including obstructing the United States Congress, civil disorder and vandalizing government property.
The defense had argued that Tarrio and the other Proud Boys were scapegoated for the deadly storming of the US Capitol that followed claims by former President Donald Trump that the 2020 US election he lost to Joe Biden was stolen.
“It was the words of Donald Trump. It was his motivation. It was his anger that caused what happened on January 6 in your beautiful and amazing city,” said lawyer Nayib Hassan during closing arguments.
Tarrio was not in Washington, D.C. during the U.S. Capitol riot, as he had been arrested two days earlier in a separate case and had to leave the city. But prosecutors claimed he organized and led the attack by Proud Boys who stormed the Capitol that day.
Prosecutor Conor Mulroe said the Proud Boys leaders “viewed themselves as Donald Trump’s army, fighting to keep their favorite leader in power, regardless of what the law or the courts had to say about it” and prepared for “all-out war “.
Prosecutors based their case on a wealth of messages that Proud Boys leaders and members exchanged privately in encrypted chats — and posted publicly on social media — before, during and after the U.S. Capitol riot.
Defense attorneys argued that the prosecution had provided insufficient evidence given the gravity of the seditious conspiracy charge.
Nicholas Smith, a lawyer for former Proud Boys chapter leader Nordean, said during closing statements that prosecutors had based their case on “misrepresentation and innuendo.”
But Mulroe, the prosecutor, argued at trial that conspiracy can be an unspoken and implied “mutual understanding, achieved with a wink and a nod.”
Trump had also helped generate the perception that the Proud Boys were taking direct orders from him.
“Proud Boys – stand back and stand by,” Trump said at a presidential debate in September 2020, when asked to explicitly condemn the far-right group of self-described “Western chauvinists.”
Last October, Proud Boys member Jeremy Joseph Bertino pleaded guilty to a charge of seditious conspiracy and agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department’s investigation into the riot.
Federal prosecutors also secured seditious conspiracy convictions against the founder and members of another far-right group, the Oath Keepers.
So far, more than 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the storming of the US Capitol, while the Justice Department also continues to investigate Trump’s role in the incident.