Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and three of his companions were convicted on Thursday of sedition during the Capitol storming on January 6, 2021. According to the judge in Washington DC, they conspired against the state, international news agencies report. A fifth suspect was not convicted. Tarrio’s conviction is an important milestone in the Justice Department’s major investigation into the Capitol stormers, who violently attempted to prevent the inauguration of newly elected President Joe Biden. Those convicted could face up to 20 years in prison for their actions.
The Proud Boys are a heavily armed neo-fascist movement that aligns itself with former President Donald Trump. Prosecutors say they see themselves as “Trump’s army.” Prosecutor Conor Mulroe said in his closing statement that the Proud Boys are “willing to commit violence” on Trump’s behalf. The group firmly adheres to the so-called “Big Lie” that Trump proclaims: that it was not Democrat Joe Biden who won the election, but himself. There is no evidence for this conspiracy theory.
Half a million encrypted messages
That the Proud Boys do not shy away from violence is also apparent from the encrypted messages that the members of the organization exchanged with each other about the storming of the Capitol, in which five people died. Tarrio, who himself was not present because he had been arrested for another crime just before the storming, wrote on the day of the storming: “Do what is necessary.” The next day, a Proud Boy asked what the plan was after the storm, to which Tarrio said, “Do it again.” In yet another message, he said: “Make no mistake, we did this,” referring to the attack.
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Despite an abundance of violence-glorifying and euphemistic messages, there was no explicit plan of action (the ‘smoking gun’) to be seen in the half million messages that justice gathered from Proud Boys chats. Justice therefore used two witnesses to substantiate the case against Tarrio and his associates. A North Carolina Proud Boy named Jeremy Bertino made a deal with the prosecution, telling the jury that the Proud Boys’ culture of violence and growing desperation led to the January 6 splurge. Even if there were no concrete plans, according to the witness, there was an implicit agreement between the group members to unleash a “total revolution” to prevent Biden from becoming president.
‘It was Trump’
In addition to Tarrio, three other Proud Boys have been convicted. Their lawyers chose different methods to defend them. Some attempted to demonstrate that there was no plot at all to storm the Capitol and overturn Biden’s victory. Tarrio’s lawyer, on the other hand, laid the blame on the idol of the Proud Boys, Donald Trump, who long refused to calm down the attackers on January 6, calling on them to “fight hard.”
“They were the words of Donald Trump,” lawyer Nayib Hassan told the jury. “It was his anger that was at the root of what happened here on January 6 in your beautiful and impressive city. It wasn’t Enrique Tarrio. They want to use Enrique Tarrio as a scapegoat for Donald J. Trump and those in power.” Trump himself is also under investigation in connection with the storming. A panel of congressmen accused him of staging a multipart plot to undermine the election results. Trump himself calls the investigation a “witch hunt”.
The conviction of the Proud Boys follows a similar case. The leader and five other members of the Oath Keepers, another far-right heavily armed US militia, were also convicted of conspiracy against the state.