Jury convicts members of far-right group on gravest charge brought in connection with Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot
WSJ
WASHINGTON—A jury found four leading figures of the Proud Boys, including its former chairman Enrique Tarrio, guilty of seditious conspiracy, the gravest charge brought in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
The verdict Thursday came more than a week after the jury started deliberating in a trial that dragged out for more than three months over legal objections and other courtroom wrangling between federal prosecutors and defense lawyers.
Proud Boys leaders Mr. Tarrio, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl were convicted of seditious conspiracy, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, and other charges. The defendants have been in custody since their arrests and will be sentenced at a later date.
The jurors acquitted a fifth Proud Boys defendant, Dominic Pezzola, of seditious conspiracy after additional deliberations on Thursday. They found him guilty on other charges including obstructing a proceeding of Congress and destruction of government property.
The jurors were unable to reach a verdict on some lesser charges against all the defendants, and the judge declared a mistrial on those counts.
The result marked a significant victory for the Justice Department, which had invoked the rarely used seditious-conspiracy charge against members of the far-right group then- President Donald Trump told to “stand back and stand by” from the 2020 debate stage. During the trial, federal prosecutors said the Proud Boys were jubilant over the debate-stage remark and viewed themselves as “Donald Trump’s army” as the former president challenged his 2020 election defeat.
“Today’s verdict makes clear that the Justice Department will do everything in its power to defend the American people and defend democracy,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
“We respect the jury’s decision although we disagree with it,” said Nayib Hassan, a lawyer for Mr. Tarrio. “We are currently working on the appellate process.”
The Proud Boys has described itself as a men’s organization for “Western chauvinists” and has often fought with left-wing activists. “The fact that the Proud Boys leaders are officially seditionists will surely hurt the Proud Boys’ arguments that they are merely a fraternal drinking club,” said Jon Lewis, a researcher at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.
Thursday’s verdict could deter some Proud Boys recruits, but the far-right group has shown remarkable resilience after the Capitol riot, extremism researchers say.
“The Proud Boys’ reputation will certainly be damaged due to the revelations during the trial and today’s convictions, but it won’t signal a death blow to the organization, and we expect their local activity to continue,” said Lindsay Schubiner, director of programs at Western States Center, a left-leaning Portland, Ore.-based civil-rights organization.
The guilty verdicts are among the highest-profile convictions the Justice Department has secured in the wave of more than 1,000 prosecutions stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. In the two years since the attack, federal prosecutors have extracted guilty pleas from hundreds of accused rioters while also winning numerous convictions at trial.
Still, the Justice Department expects the reckoning with the Capitol attack to continue for years to come, saying last year that more than 1,000 further people could face charges linked to the assault.
The government earlier secured seditious-conspiracy convictions against six members of another far-right group, the Oath Keepers, for their roles in the Jan. 6 attack. In two separate trials, prosecutors presented evidence that the group stashed weapons for a “quick reaction” force that could be summoned into Washington. They also showed video of some Oath Keepers members moving into the Capitol in military-style “stack formation.”
Prosecutors pursued a more ambitious theory in the Proud Boys case, arguing in court filings and hearings that the group planned to rile up the crowd, effectively mobilizing the mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters.
The government highlighted a message in which Mr. Tarrio celebrated the attack, writing: “Make no mistake. We did this.” While the most prominent of the five defendants, Mr. Tarrio wasn’t physically present at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, having been ordered to remain outside Washington following his arrest days earlier on charges related to the burning of a Black Lives Matter flag the previous month.
The trial featured testimony from Jeremy Bertino, a former Proud Boy from North Carolina, who pleaded guilty in October to seditious conspiracy and agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department. On the witness stand, Mr. Bertino described how the Proud Boys grew increasingly desperate following the 2020 election and plotted “all-out revolution” to prevent the transfer of power.
“Time was running out to save the country,” Mr. Bertino said. “We were desperate at that point for anything else that could change the outcome of the election.”
Last week, in the Justice Department’s final words to the jury, prosecutor Nadia Moore outlined what she called the “devastating evidence of the defendants’ guilt.”
“Voting and protesting didn’t get these defendants what they wanted,” she said. “So they decided they would ignore the will of the people. They would influence the government with threats and violence. They saw a second Civil War coming, and they wanted to be on the front lines.”
Through weeks of trial proceedings, federal prosecutors presented jurors with messages and other evidence of an alleged scheme to keep Mr. Trump in office. After weeks of planning, with references to revolution and 1776, the Proud Boys effectively weaponized the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol, prosecutors said.
Defense lawyers for the five Proud Boys rejected the notion that they hatched a conspiracy to prevent the certification of President Biden’s victory, arguing that federal prosecutors were overblowing the group’s blustery rhetoric.
Mr. Hassan, Mr. Tarrio’s lawyer, placed blame for the Capitol assault on Mr. Trump during his closing argument last week.
“It was Donald Trump’s words,” Mr. Hassan told jurors. ”It was his motivation. It was his anger that caused what occurred on January 6th in your amazing and beautiful city.”
Of the five defendants, only Messrs. Rehl and Pezzola took the stand to testify in their own defense—a risky gambit that made for a climactic end to the trial as they faced cross-examination from federal prosecutors.
Mr. Rehl testified that the Proud Boys had “no objective” on Jan. 6, 2021, saying its members “were just going to march around the city, because that’s all we ever do.”
During the cross-examination, a federal prosecutor presented video footage that appeared to show Mr. Rehl using pepper spray against police officers defending the Capitol. Mr. Rehl testified that he couldn’t recall whether he used pepper spray against officers, and his defense lawyer argued that federal prosecutors hadn’t presented convincing proof.
Mr. Rehl’s appearance on the stand was followed by testimony from Mr. Pezzola, a former Marine who wielded a stolen riot shield to break a window into the Capitol and was among the first in the pro-Trump mob to enter the building that day. In his testimony, Mr. Rehl distanced himself from Mr. Pezzola, casting him as a rogue actor.
“He went off on his own, I guess, and made us all look bad,” Mr. Rehl said.
Mr. Pezzola said the Jan. 6 mob wasn’t an “invading force” but rather “trespassing protesters.” He insisted that he acted alone, not as part of a conspiracy with the four other Proud Boys standing trial alongside him.
