WASHINGTON — After almost three months of testimony, dozens of witnesses and countless legal fights, a jury will soon decide whether the onetime leader of the Proud Boys extremist group is guilty in one of the most serious cases brought in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Closing arguments could be as early as this week before jurors decide whether to convict Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio and four lieutenants of seditious conspiracy for what prosecutors say was a plot to forcibly stop the transfer of presidential power from Republican Donald Trump to Democrat Joe Biden after the 2020 election.
In a trial that has lasted longer than expected, little new information emerged about the Jan. 6 attack that halted Congress’ certification of Biden’s victory or the far-right extremist group’s role in the Capitol riot. But a guilty verdict against Tarrio, who wasn’t even in Washington, D.C., when the riot erupted, would affirm that those accused of planning and inciting the violence could be held responsible even if they didn’t join in it.
The case is nearing a close as a new problem may be on the horizon for the Proud Boys, a neofacist group known for brawling and street fights with left-wing activists and disrupting storytelling sessions by drag performers and other LGBTQ events around the country.
The group, Tarrio and two others on trial are also facing a separate, multimillion-dollar lawsuit. A judge is poised to decide how much they should have to pay a historic Black church in Washington for Proud Boys destroying a Black Lives Matter sign during a weekend of pro-Trump rallies in December 2020 that erupted into violence. Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church is seeking up to $22 million in punitive damages, saying it was part of an effort to intimidate those who fight for racial justice.
Tarrio wasn’t in Washington on Jan. 6 because he had been arrested two days earlier for his role in burning another Black Lives Matter banner torn down from a different Washington church, Asbury United Methodist. Tarrio was ordered to stay out of the city after arrest.
The seditious conspiracy case in Washington’s federal court, which began with opening statements in January, has been slowed by bickering between the judge and defense attorneys, repeated requests for a mistrial, lengthy cross-examinations of witnesses and other legal maneuvers that often kept jurors waiting in the wings instead of hearing courtroom testimony.
On trial with Tarrio are Proud Boys chapter leaders Ethan Nordean, of Auburn, Washington; and Zachary Rehl, of Philadelphia; self-described Proud Boys organizer Joseph Biggs, of Ormond Beach, Fla.; and Dominic Pezzola, a Proud Boys member from Rochester, N.Y.
It is unclear if any of them will testify before the defense rests and jurors hear attorneys’ closing arguments.
The backbone of the government’s case is a trove of messages that Proud Boys leaders privately exchanged on the Telegram platform before, during and after the Capitol riot. Their online rhetoric became increasingly angry with each failure by Trump’s lawyers to challenge election results.
“If Biden steals this election, (the Proud Boys) will be political prisoners,” Tarrio posted in Nov. 16, 2020. “We won’t go quietly … I promise.”
As the mob attacked Capitol, Tarrio posted on social media, “Don’t (expletive) leave.”
When a Proud Boys member asked, “Are we a militia yet?” Tarrio responded with one word — “Yep” — in a voice note.
“Make no mistake,” Tarrio wrote. “We did this.”
Defense attorneys argued there is no evidence of a plan for the Proud Boys to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6.
They have stressed that Proud Boys had FBI informants in their ranks who didn’t raise any red flags about the group before Jan. 6. In an effort to show jurors that Tarrio was trying to avoid violence, they also showed how Tarrio frequently communicated with an officer assigned to monitor extremist groups’ activity in Washington and advised the officer of the group’s plans in the weeks before Jan. 6.
Several Oath Keepers leaders and members who previously stood trial on seditious conspiracy charges similarly argued that the riot was a spontaneous outpouring of election-fueled rage, not the result of a premediated plan. While prosecutors said the Capitol attack was only a means to an end in the Oath Keepers’ larger plot to stop the transfer of power, defense attorneys repeatedly raised the lack of evidence that the Oath Keepers had an explicit plan to storm the Capitol.
