Ready for “all-out war”, leaders of the far-right Proud Boys viewed themselves as foot soldiers for Donald Trump as he clung to power after the 2020 election, a prosecutor said on Monday at the close of a historic trial over the January 6 Capitol attack.
After more than three months of testimony, jurors began hearing closing arguments in the seditious conspiracy case accusing the former Proud Boys national chairman, Enrique Tarrio, and four lieutenants of plotting to forcibly stop the transfer of power.
The Proud Boys were “lined up behind Donald Trump and willing to commit violence on his behalf”, prosecutor Conor Mulroe said. “These defendants saw themselves as Donald Trump’s army, fighting to keep their preferred leader in power no matter what the law or the courts had to say about it.”
The justice department has worked to link the violence of 6 January 2021 to Trump. Prosecutors have repeatedly shown a video clip of Trump telling the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during his first debate with Joe Biden.
Tarrio is one of the top targets of the Capitol attack investigation. He wasn’t in Washington but is accused of orchestrating it from afar. Defense attorneys say there is no evidence of a conspiracy or a plan to attack the Capitol.
Nicholas Smith, an attorney for the former Proud Boys chapter leader Ethan Nordean, said prosecutors built their case on “misdirection and innuendo”, accusing them of repeatedly playing the clip of Trump to manipulate jurors.
“Does that prove some conspiracy by the men here?” Smith asked. “We all know it doesn’t.”
Mulroe said a conspiracy can be an unspoken and implicit “mutual understanding, reached with a wink and a nod”.
Seditious conspiracy, a civil war-era charge that can be difficult to prove, carries a sentence of up to 20 years. The Proud Boys face other charges too.
The justice department has secured seditious conspiracy convictions against the founder and members of another far-right group, the Oath Keepers. But this is the first major trial involving the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist group that remains a force in Republican politics.
The government’s case is founded on messages leaders and members exchanged in encrypted chats and posted on social media before, during and after the January 6 attack. The messages show Proud Boys celebrating when Trump told them to “stand back and stand by”. After the election, they raged online about baseless claims of a stolen election and what would happen when Biden took office.
“If Biden steals this election, [the Proud Boys] will be political prisoners,” Tarrio posted. “We won’t go quietly … I promise.”
Jurors also saw gleeful messages posted during the Capitol riot when a group marched to the Capitol and some of them entered the building after the mob overwhelmed police.
“Make no mistake,” Tarrio wrote. “We did this.”
Prosecutors showed videos during closing statements, including one that appeared to show defendant Zachary Rehl spraying police with pepper spray. Confronted with the images earlier in the trial, Rehl said he didn’t remember it and couldn’t tell if it was him. Mulroe said the images show “he did it and he lied under oath about it”.
Tarrio, a Miami resident, Nordean and Rehl are on trial with Joseph Biggs and Dominic Pezzola. Nordean, of Auburn, Washington, was a chapter president. Biggs, of Ormond Beach, Florida, was a self-described organizer. Rehl was president of a chapter in Philadelphia. Pezzola was a member from Rochester, New York.
after newsletter promotion
Tarrio was arrested in Washington two days before the January 6 attack on charges that he burned a church’s Black Lives Matter banner. He followed a judge’s order to leave town.
Defense attorneys called several current and former Proud Boys, trying to portray the group as a drinking club that only engaged in violence for self-defense.
“If you don’t like what some of them say, that doesn’t make them guilty,” Rehl’s attorney, Carmen Hernandez, told jurors.
Rehl said the group had “no objective” on 6 January. Pezzola testified that he got “caught up in the craziness” and acted alone when he used a riot shield to smash a Capitol window.
The prosecutor told jurors the Proud Boys leaders wanted to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s victory “by any means necessary, including force”.
“You want to call this a drinking club? You want to call this a men’s fraternal organization? Ladies and gentlemen, let’s call this what it is … a violent gang that came together to use force against its enemies,” Mulroe said.
Key witnesses included two former Proud Boys who pleaded guilty to riot-related charges and are cooperating with the government in hope of lighter sentences.
The first, Matthew Greene, testified that group members were expecting a “civil war”. The second, Jeremy Bertino, testified that he viewed the Proud Boys as leaders of the conservative movement and “the tip of the spear”.
The Proud Boys’ defense mirrored arguments made by lawyers for members of the Oath Keepers: that there was no evidence of a plan to attack the Capitol.
Prosecutors secured seditious conspiracy convictions against six Oath Keepers, while three were acquitted. Those three, however, were convicted of obstructing certification of Biden’s victory.
