The trial of the “Proud Boys” who took part in the January 6, 2021 insurrection has been going on for three months. What has become clear to everyone except the defense, is that on their own testimony, the Proud Boys were ready for “all-out war,” and they viewed themselves as foot soldiers fighting for Donald Trump as the former president scrabbled to hold on to power after the 2020 election. They were his personal army there to do his bidding.
Jurors have now heard more than three months of testimony and the attorneys are making their closing arguments in the seditious conspiracy case accusing Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio and four lieutenants of plotting to forcibly stop the transfer of power from Trump to President Joe Biden.
The Proud Boys were “lined up behind Donald Trump and willing to commit violence on his behalf,” prosecutor Conor Mulroe told jurors. “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 prosecution’s words underscore how the Justice Department has worked throughout the trial to link the violence on Jan. 6, 2021, to the rhetoric and actions of the former president. Prosecutors have repeatedly shown jurors a video clip of Trump telling the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during his first presidential debate with Joe Biden.
Defense attorneys say there is no evidence of a conspiracy or a plan for Proud Boys to attack the Capitol.
Seditious conspiracy, a Civil War-era charge that is rare and can be difficult to prove, carries a potential sentence of up to 20 years in prison. The Proud Boys also face other serious charges.
The foundation of the government’s case, which started with jury selection in January, is a trove of messages that Proud Boys leaders and members privately exchanged in encrypted chats — and publicly posted on social media — before, during and after the Jan. 6 attack. These messages are hard to dispute or rebut, as they came right from the defendants’ social media accounts.
The messages show Proud Boys celebrating when Trump, a Republican, told the group to “stand back and stand by” during his first debate with Biden, a Democrat. After the 2020 election, they raged online for weeks 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 on Nov. 16, 2020. “We won’t go quietly … I promise.”
Jurors also saw the string of gleeful messages that Proud Boys members posted during the Jan. 6 riot. A group of Proud Boys marched to the Capitol that day. Some entered the building after the mob. In what seems to be an all-out admission of guilt that surely must be difficult for the defense attorneys to counter, Tarrio wrote in one message, “Make no mistake, we did this.”
The defense attorneys called several current and former Proud Boys to the stand, trying to portray the group as a drinking club that only engaged in violence for self-defense against anti-fascist activists.
Trying to minimize the damage of the self-confessed messages, Hernandez, one of the defense attorneys, addressed the jurors: ”If you don’t like what some of them say, that doesn’t make them guilty.”
