WASHINGTON – Former Proud Boys chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and three other leaders of the far-right extremist group were found guilty today of seditious conspiracy in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
A jury deliberated for seven days in Washington before finding Tarrio, 39, and other defendants guilty on 31 of 46 counts. The jury returned not-guilty verdicts on five counts – including acquitting one member, Dominic Pezzola, of seditious conspiracy – and deadlocked on 10 others. The result marked the third decisive victory for the Justice Department in three seditious conspiracy trials held after what it called a historic act of domestic terrorism to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden after the 2020 presidential election.
Tarrio, dressed in a blue suit and vest, gazed at his relatives in the courtroom gallery as the verdict was read. The other men fixed their eyes on the jury foreman, and one gently clapped Pezzola on the back when his acquittal was read.
“If the worst happens… we’re standing on principle,” Tarrio had said in a jail call shared on social media after closing arguments on April 25, making his first extended public comments since his March 2022 indictment.
Tarrio did not testify at trial, but he contradicted his defence team’s argument to jurors that he was being made “a scapegoat for Donald Trump and those in power.” Instead, Tarrio embraced hard-line Trump backers’ claims that he was being used as “the next stepping stone” to “get to” Trump, who is running again for president. “They’re trying to get to the top and they’re trying to manipulate the 2024 election,” he said in the jail call.
US district judge Timothy J. Kelly told the parties that he expected to impose sentences in August.
Legal analysts said the convictions on the historically rare and politically weighty crime of seditious conspiracy sent a necessary signal of deterrence to anyone who might seek to repeat or draw inspiration from that day’s political violence. The verdict also could carry implications for the former president. Special counsel Jack Smith is investigating whether Trump or those around him broke the law in seeking to hold on to power by fanning false and incendiary claims that the election was stolen, pressuring state and federal officials to assist the effort, and sending thousands of supporters who heard him speak at a January 6 rally to march to the Capitol.
After the verdict, Attorney-General Merrick Garland spoke at the Justice Department and said the jury’s decision made it clear “that the Justice Department will do everything in its power to defend the American people and American democracy.” Garland noted that one of the country’s largest criminal investigations ever has secured more than 600 convictions.
“Our work will continue,” Garland said. “The Justice Department will never stop working to defend the democracy to which all Americans are entitled.”
New York University law professor Ryan Goodman said the verdict empowers the special counsel to bring indictments for efforts to overturn the election.
“It underscores the enormous stakes in mobilising Americans to believe the ‘big lie’ and directing an armed crowd to interfere with the congressional proceedings,” Goodman said.
The convictions mark a milestone on the journey to accountability for the perpetrators of the Capitol attack, “showing that political violence and attacks on our democratic institutions will be taken seriously by our justice system and will not be tolerated by the American people,” said Lindsay Schubiner, director of programs at Western States Centre, a Portland-based civil rights group that monitors anti-democracy movements nationwide.
Over nearly 15 weeks of proceedings, prosecutors alleged that the Proud Boys on trial saw themselves as Trump’s “army.” Inspired by his directive to “stand by” during a September 2020 presidential debate and mobilised by his December 2020 call for a “wild” protest, prosecutors said, the men sought to keep Trump in power through violence on the day that Congress met to certify the presidential election results.
Defence attorneys for Tarrio fought back by blaming the former president, saying prosecutors were punishing the Proud Boys for their political beliefs, for an unplanned riot triggered by Trump’s incitement of angry supporters, and for law enforcement failures.
All defendants were convicted of at least one count punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Tarrio and fellow Proud Boys leaders Ethan Nordean, Joe Biggs, and Zachary Rehl were found guilty of three such crimes: seditious conspiracy – or plotting to oppose by force Congress’ certification – conspiring to obstruct the congressional session, and actually obstructing the proceeding.
The jury did not find that Pezzola, who joined the Proud Boys in late 2020, was part of either conspiracy, but it did find him guilty of the obstruction charge, as well as of assaulting police, stealing a riot shield and smashing the first window breached by rioters, and of conspiring to impede lawmakers and police. All five were convicted of conspiring to block lawmakers and police from doing their jobs.
Kelly declared a mistrial after jurors reported that they could not reach unanimity over whether to hold all five men responsible for aiding Pezzola’s destruction of government property and another Proud Boys member who threw a water bottle at an officer.
All defendants are expected to appeal the verdict, which attorneys for Biggs and Rehl called a miscarriage of justice and disappointing. Biggs’s attorney Norm Pattis tweeted: “The haters will crow and the government will cheat… it was a difficult trial. The appeal is promising. Much love to the Boys and their supporters.”
Steven Metcalf, who represented Pezzola, said that even though his client was one of the most visible of the defendants after smashing a Capitol window, the jury was able to separate him from the seditious conspiracy charge. “It doesn’t make sense when this seditious conspiracy even became created, existed, and how it went for any of these defendants,” Metcalf said. “People should reassess the entire conspiracy here… the conspiracy was fairy dust, it was a fairytale, because it did not exist.”
Tarrio is the first person not present at the Capitol to be found criminally responsible at trial in the violence that injured scores of police, ransacked offices, and forced the evacuation of lawmakers. The government alleged he watched from Baltimore after being expelled from the federal capital one day earlier pending trial for burning a stolen Black Lives Matter flag at an earlier pro-Trump rally in Washington.
Fourteen people have now been convicted in the three seditious conspiracy trials over the Capitol riot, the highest-profile cases stemming from the largest prosecution in US history. All defendants were followers of two extremist groups that rose to prominence during Trump’s presidency: the Proud Boys, known for engaging in street battles with far-left activists, and the anti-government Oath Keepers, whose founder Stewart Rhodes and five others were found guilty in November and January after preparing for armed “civil war” if Trump lost reelection.
Four other members of the two groups previously pleaded guilty to the count. Three Oath Keepers members were acquitted but, like Pezzola, were convicted of obstructing the congressional session.
Both Tarrio and Rhodes were accused of playing an outsize role in organising the violence or threat of violence by extremists drawn to the Capitol by Trump’s incendiary and baseless claims that the 2020 election was illegitimate.
Defence lawyers say the government’s theory that Tarrio and his co-defendants could be held criminally liable for using other rioters as “tools” of violence could be applied to many others who were not near the Capitol that day.
But US prosecutors have not produced any “smoking gun” evidence explicitly tracing the actions of any of the Capitol’s violent actors to Trump or his advisers – either from a cooperating witness or an actual written message – although that conceivably could change if anyone still facing charges or pending sentencing “flips” and cooperates.
The government’s own evidence at trial showed how challenging the investigation has been. Statements by a lead FBI case agent in internal messages accidentally disclosed to the defence and entered into trial show that investigators only cracked Tarrio’s encrypted phone in late January 2022 – a year after the riot.
Only then, FBI special agent Nicole Miller wrote on February 1, 2022, did she believe evidence on Tarrio’s phone cleared the “hurdle” to bring a conspiracy case against him.
The government argued that the Proud Boys’ concerted action on January 6 alone was evidence of a criminal conspiracy, when prosecutors said the group marched to the Capitol even before Trump finished speaking at the White House Ellipse. They helped drive rioters forward at several points and celebrated with “victory smokes” and claims of credit after the Capitol breach, prosecutors said.
“Make no mistake…” Tarrio texted, “We did this.”
But prosecutors also cited hundreds of encrypted messages, chats, and social media posts involving the defendants. The conversations discussed keeping Trump in power “by any means necessary including force” – as star government witness and former Proud Boys member Jeremy Bertino testified – and storming the Capitol. The messages show that the Proud Boys were also angry at police’s handling of Bertino’s stabbing after a December 12, 2020, rally in Washington, the government said.
The government has previously shown evidence that Tarrio, a former aide to Trump political confidant Roger Stone, was in contact with Trump’s “stop the steal” campaign organiser Ali Alexander and Rhodes, the Oath Keepers founder, throughout the post-election period. Rhodes had shared a proposal for storming Congress – while Tarrio, Nordean, and Biggs were each in contact by phone and text with Infowars founder Alex Jones or producer Owen Shroyer on January 4, 5, and 6.
Stone, Alexander, and Jones have denied any wrongdoing and have not been charged with any crime.
The Proud Boys used “1776” as a shorthand and literally said they would go to war to keep Trump in office, prosecutor Conor Mulroe said in closing arguments.
Attorneys for the Proud Boys put on a combative defence, variously urging jurors to blame the violence on Trump, not his followers; accusing the Biden administration of overcharging protesters and locking up political opponents; alleging that a corrupt or incompetent Justice Department hid informants’ and police roles in the violence; and casting the defendants as beer-drinking brawlers who were patriots at heart, not “foot soldiers of the right” who turned from violently battling leftists to attacking police and lawmakers.
“There were no statements in those chats about stopping the transfer of power on January 6 with or without force,” said Nayib Hassan, an attorney for Tarrio. He said defendants had no “shared objective” other than to march, protest, and promote the Proud Boys brand.
Tarrio, Nordean, and Biggs did not testify at trial, but Rehl said the Proud Boys’ preparations were strictly for self-defence after past violence in Washington. “There was nothing nefarious about it,” he said.
Pezzola testified to “take responsibility for my actions” and to clear the others, he said, but he also attacked prosecutors and “this corrupt trial with your fake charges.”
Pattis, the attorney for Biggs, also warned that convictions would only exacerbate the country’s divisions and possibly lead to civil war.
The verdict comes amid intensifying legal peril for Trump. While the trial was underway, former vice-president Mike Pence and Trump’s personal attorney Evan Corcoran testified to grand juries in the special counsel investigations about efforts to block the lawful transfer of presidential power, and about Trump’s handling of classified documents after leaving office. A jury in New York City this week is hearing writer E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit claiming that Trump raped her decades ago, and the former president was charged in state court there in April with felony bookkeeping fraud to hide hush money payments.
As for the Proud Boys, the prosecution over the Capitol attack, along with revelations that Tarrio and others have been federal informants, have divided the group. But membership continues to grow, and followers have found a new cause in protesting drag performances and transgender rights events around the country, sometimes leading to violence.
“If you are running a group (that) is somewhat effective… I guarantee you that there are (informants) within your group,” Tarrio said in last week’s jail call with reporters hosted by Gateway Pundit. He added that upon his release, he thought he might get out of politics and do “some kind of cultural thing.” – Washington Post, May 5, 2023
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