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Allison Dinner

The Justice Department on Thursday pointed to leaders in the far-right <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/01/12/proud-boys-trial-openings/" target=_blank>Proud Boys as responsible for storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021</a>, suggesting the attack might not have succeeded if organized extremists had not led the charge.

“The transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden was stopped — at the hands of these defendants,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason B.A. McCullough told jurors. Invoking Trump’s words at a 2020 presidential debate, McCullough said: “They did not stand back. They did not stand by.”

Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and four members of the right-wing group he led are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/01/12/proud-boys-seditious-conspiracy-trial-tarrio/" target=_blank>charged with seditious conspiracy</a>, among other felonies.

Attorneys for Tarrio and the other defendants also pointed to Trump, saying the Proud Boys had become a “scapegoat” for the former president. “He is the one who unleashed that mob at the Capitol on January 6,” Tarrio’s lawyer said in his opening statement.

january 6 speaker search

Federal prosecutors for the first time laid responsibility for the success of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol on five Proud Boys leaders at their seditious conspiracy trial Thursday, accusing members of the extremist group of spearheading violence that halted Congress’s confirmation of the 2020 presidential election results.

“The transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden was stopped — at the hands of these defendants,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason B.A. McCullough told jurors.

Directed by former Proud Boys chairman and lead defendant Enrique Tarrio, the prosecutor said, “These men joined together and agreed to use any means necessary including force to stop Congress from certifying the election, and on Jan. 6 they took aim at the heart of our democracy.”

Defense attorneys blasted prosecutors’ effort to find “scapegoats” for what they called an unplanned riot. Instead, they blamed then-President Donald Trump for inciting the mob and law enforcement leaders for failing to prepare for violence.

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/01/12/proud-boys-trial-openings/?itid=lk_inline_manual_13" target=_blank>Read the full story.</a>

Washington Post Staff

House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack 

From its first public hearing, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot has named the Proud Boys as a key component of the attack on the Capitol. In the first prime-time hearing in June, one Capitol Police officer described how a group of Proud Boys, including current defendant Joseph Biggs, overwhelmed her and four other officers at the first line of outer barricades, and sparked a bloody melee that led to 140 police officers being injured.

Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards recounts Jan. 6 ‘war scene’

The dramatic hearing ignited prompt objections from the defendants in this case, seeking a delay in the trial scheduled for later in June, and prosecutors agreed. U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly then postponed the trial, initially to August, but another committee hearing in July again spent time on the Proud Boys and their interactions with other groups such as the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters.

Then in December, the committee issued <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2022/jan-6-final-report-findings/?itid=lk_inline_manual_19" target=_blank>its final report</a>, which featured photos of Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and further <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-REPORT/html-submitted/ch8.html" target=_blank>details of the group’s involvement</a> on Jan. 6. The defense asked to have the trial moved out of Washington, or the jury pool expanded, citing “the House Select Committee’s obsessive and unfair focus upon the Proud Boys and Tarrio,” but Kelly declined. Jurors initially filled out a written questionnaire, and were then quizzed in person about their knowledge of the House committee hearings and findings, and both sides have agreed on a group of 12 jurors and four alternates.

Tom Jackman

Capitol Riot Investigation Extremist Groups

In the final opening statement of the Proud Boys trial, the lawyer for defendant Zachary Rehl said he went to the Capitol on Jan. 6 expecting to hear speakers protesting the result of the election. The lawyer noted that such gatherings had received permits and approval from the Capitol Police.

Attorney Carmen Hernandez said Rehl had not used force on anyone and didn’t enter the Capitol until 2:53 p.m., after the electoral vote count had stopped and members of Congress had already been evacuated. She said that of 160,000 messages reviewed by investigators from various media, there was “not a single message that Mr. Rehl intended to or planned to attack the Capitol and disrupt the proceedings.”

Hernandez said Rehl “came to D.C. to exercise his First Amendment rights,” noting that protests weren’t unusual in the nation’s capital. “If you live in D.C., there’s a protest every day, for multiple reasons.”

As part of a discussion three days before Jan. 6, a fellow Proud Boy named John Stewart messaged Rehl that the location of their protest “should be out in front of the Capitol building. That’s where the vote is taking place, and all the objections.”

Rehl responded: “Is NobleLead,” the code name used by Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, “still doing a speech? Where is that?”

Hernandez said that multiple groups requested permission to protest near the Capitol on Jan 6. “So there were on that day anticipated to be multiple demonstrations on Capitol grounds,” Hernandez said, “and they had been sanctioned by Capitol Police. … Mr. Rehl’s view of that day was he was attending demonstrations where people could talk.”

Capitol Breach Extremist Plots

While other defense attorneys have praised the police who defended the U.S. Capitol and condemned the Jan. 6 attack as a tragedy their clients did not instigate, New York Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola took the opposite tack.

Roger Roots, who joined Pezzola’s defense team only last week, said Pezzola was justifiably angry at police that day because of his training as a Marine veteran.

“An infantry Marine can only do one thing. They’re not trained to retreat that well,” Roots said.

The police were hitting the crowd “with pepper balls or rubber bullets,” Roots said, one of which hit another man in the head.

“He is a well trained Marine infantryman and he knows that that violates basic rules of engagement for any kind of civil disturbance,” Roots said. “Police are trained not to shoot people in the face with rubber bullets.”

The Capitol Police held back <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/capitol-police-inspector-general-hearing/2021/04/15/66407a96-9dfe-11eb-8005-bffc3a39f6d3_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_35" target=_blank>most of their riot-control weapons</a> on Jan. 6, which leaders later said severely hampered their response. Black Lives Matter protesters, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/activists-contrast-treatment-blm-pro-trump-mob/2021/01/06/a59a5a0e-506a-11eb-bda4-615aaefd0555_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_35" target=_blank>who had been teargased and hit with rubber bullets</a> during protests the previous summer, questioned why so many Trump supporters were allowed to roam freely in and around the Capitol for hours. But Roots said Pezzola was “admonishing the officers” for responding to the crowd too harshly.

In the ensuing “tug of war,” Pezzola took the riot shield. “That is not a robbery,” Roots said, without elaborating. He then repeatedly played a video of Pezzola smoking a “victory” cigar inside the Rotunda. It was actually exculpatory, Roots argued, because Pezzola bragged not about stopping the peaceful transfer of power but merely about taking over the Capitol.

Rachel Weiner

Jury Selection Begins In Seditious Conspiracy Trial For Proud Boys Members Involved In January 6 Attack

A last-minute addition to the legal team representing Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola at trial is a Montana libertarian who has a history of racist views and white supremacist ties.

Roger Roots, a perennial candidate for office in Montana on the Libertarian ticket, entered his appearance in the case on Dec. 27, midway through jury selection.

The Rhode Island State Supreme Court initially denied Roots <a href="https://www.courts.ri.gov/Courts/SupremeCourt/OpinionsOrders/pdf-files/00-276.pdf" target=_blank>a license to practice law</a> in the state in part because of his “use of an alias to mask his ‘unsavory’ connections to white supremacy groups” and writings expressing “explicit racial and ethnic bias.” While in prison in 1993 for possessing weapons after a felony conviction of violently resisting arrest, according to the court record, Roots wrote a pamphlet that praised Hitler and described Black people as so inferior to White people that they are a different species.

Roots has repeatedly said he has since educated himself and changed his views.

“I fight racism every day. I am anti-racism, I detest racism,” he said before court began Thursday.

Roots <a href="https://www.irehr.org/reports/peoples-rights-report/profile-roger-roots/#_edn7" target=_blank>told the Montana Human Rights Network</a> in 2008 that he had not “spoken or written a racist statement in years and disavowed “any opinion I expressed during my twenties.” But the nonprofit has noted that Roots maintained a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYs3vl5t8BY" target=_blank>relationship</a> with a well-known white supremacist leader through the 2010s.

Roots also <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/14/oath-keepers-jan-6-trial-stewart-rhodes-roger-roots-00056707" target=_blank>did some legal research</a> for an attorney defending Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes just before Rhodes’s trial on seditious conspiracy.

A lawyer for Dominic Pezzola, the Proud Boys member long identified by the government as the first person to smash a window into the Capitol on Jan. 6, played video showing that another man had thrown a long wooden 2 x 4 through the window first, and that Pezzola merely came along after and smashed it further with a police shield, allowing rioters to enter.

Attorney Roger Roots also noted that the felony destruction of property charge against Pezzola requires the damage to be more than $1,000. “Look at the window,” Roots said. “These are not $1,000 windows.”

Roots questioned whether what happened on Jan. 6 was even an “attack,” saying that if it was “if it was an attack, it may have been one of the lamest planned attacks you could imagine.”

In the first part of his opening statement, Roots repeatedly noted that “this entire case is about a six-hour delay of Congress,” the span of time when members were forced to stop the electoral vote certification because the Capitol was being overrun. Roots noted that the certification of the presidential election of 1876 took nearly two months, and that the election of George W. Bush in 2000 was delayed for more than one month.

“The government makes a huge deal out of a six-hour delay,” Roots said. He noted that Congress had scheduled two hours for debate and objections that day. Roots also pointed out that the supposed insurrection planners were unarmed. “Imagine an insurrection where the insurrectionists are 100 percent in compliance with D.C. gun laws, which are very onerous,” Roots said.

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump holds a rally to contest the certification of the 2020 U.S. presidential election results by the U.S. Congress in Washington

Making explicit what an attorney for another Proud Boy only gestured at, an attorney for Henry “Enrique” Tarrio said that the longtime Proud Boys leader was accused of seditious conspiracy only because it would be too difficult to prosecute former president Donald Trump.

“President Trump told these people that the election was stolen,” defense attorney Sabino Jauregui told jurors. “He’s the one who unleashed that mob at the Capitol on January 6.”

A special counsel is investigating Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack, and a House committee recently recommended <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/19/trump-referrals-jan-6-committee/?itid=lk_inline_manual_56" target=_blank>charging the former president with crimes</a> that include obstructing an official proceeding. It’s one of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/01/12/proud-boys-seditious-conspiracy-trial-tarrio/?itid=lk_inline_manual_56" target=_blank>nine charges</a> lodged against Tarrio.

But, Jauregui said, “It’s too hard to blame Trump, it’s too hard to put him on the witness stand with his army of lawyers.” So, he said, “they go for the easy target” — Tarrio.

He also cast Tarrio as an embattled figure within the Proud Boys, some of whom saw him as weak. Tarrio “wanted to razzle-dazzle for the media,” and look tough to raise money and get new followers but he didn’t actually want to fight left-wing counterprotesters, Jauregui said.

Other “factions within the Proud Boys” tried to take over the group because they did want to fight “antifa,” Jauregui said, and “did not like Enrique’s stance of nonviolence.” They mocked Tarrio’s leadership, he said. “It was a joke in the Proud Boys that Enrique couldn’t even get the Proud Boys to coherently march in one direction,” Jauregui said. “It was like herding cats.”

So he said Tarrio created the “Ministry Of Self Defense” to get his followers in line.

Jauregui said it would be an “injustice” to make Tarrio “a scapegoat” for both Trump and the intelligence failures of law enforcement.

“The cops on the ground, those guys are heroes and they fought valiantly against a frenzied mob that Trump unleashed on the Capitol,” Jauregui said. “But it was definitely the fault of the leadership not to supply the officers with the supplies they needed, the numbers they needed.”

“Don’t let the government do it,” he said. “Don’t let them do it.”

Capitol Riot Proud Boys

The lawyer for Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, the longtime chairman of the Proud Boys, said the organization was mostly a “drinking group,” and that their internal messages have been stitched together out of context to make a scapegoat out of Tarrio.

Sabino Jauregui said the Proud Boys were inclusive of all races and sexual preferences, and that “What they share is an ideology. The Proud Boys think that … western civilization is the best. … The Proud Boys think America’s the best. That’s what they feel, that’s what they fight for. It’s not a political thing, it’s not a racial thing. And they believe in free speech. They believe you should say whatever you want.”

He noted that Tarrio was not present at the Capitol on Jan. 6, without noting Tarrio had been <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/proud-boys-arrest-church-black-lives-matter/2021/01/05/18c58640-4f6a-11eb-83e3-322644d82356_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_68" target=_blank>banned from the city</a> for a<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/tarrio-guilty-plea-proud-boy/2021/07/19/19fbcd6a-e8aa-11eb-97a0-a09d10181e36_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_68" target=_blank> vandalism arrest after a prior pro-Trump rally</a>. But in the messages he sent in the two months after the November 2020 election, Tarrio “made it easy” for investigators. “Enrique wrote and said a lot of things, very offensive stuff. And that’s how he made it easy for the government,” Jauregui said, referring to messages in which Tarrio celebrated the riot.

He argued that prosecutors presenting individual messages from Tarrio do not indicate what came before that message, who was reading his messages and what the true context was. “The government is stitching together one Telegram message here, one Parler post there, and put together a figure, a picture; they’re trying to build a conspiracy that does not exist.”

Jauregui said the government’s intent is to “stitch these things together, so you hate them, you hate the Proud Boys, and your feelings are overcome.” Echoing a defense lawyer who spoke earlier, Jauregui said, “you have to put your feelings aside.”

To show that the Proud Boys did not plan the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, Ethan Nordean’s defense attorney Nicholas D. Smith said he would call as witnesses multiple government informants embedded in the group. One, he said, texted his FBI handler as the barriers blocking the Capitol grounds were being breached, around noon on Jan. 6.

“PB did not do it nor inspire,” the message read. It was “herd mentality,” the informant said.

He said informants from inside the group would also “testify that the march to the Capitol was just for the cameras.” The Proud Boys <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2023/01/05/jan6-documentaries-naudet-quested/?itid=lk_inline_manual_74" target=_blank>were being followed</a> that day by a documentary filmmaker.

Smith added that members of the group deleted chats from the messaging service Telegram because “some of these individuals thought there were informants among them” — and “they were right.”

Other defense witnesses, he said, will testify that Nordean was trying to prevent violence that day, at one point holding up his fist to keep members of the Proud Boys back and at another stopping someone from attacking a police officer.

Jurors probably will feel swayed to find Proud Boys leaders guilty of seditious conspiracy and other felonies “based on the politics or the views of the defendants,” defense attorney Nicholas D. Smith, representing Ethan Nordean, said in his opening statement.

While prosecutors emphasized that the Proud Boys group is not on trial, just individual members, Smith said the government wanted jurors “to find guilt based on your dislike of these people.” He asked the jury to “set aside feelings, emotions, anger, politics and make something like a scientific diagnosis.”

Just because the Proud Boys were angry over the election and joined the protest at the Capitol doesn’t mean that they planned what happened that day, he argued.

Smith said the Proud Boys were being used as a “scapegoat” for a mob that had no leader and a riot that was not planned.

Desperate, angry, destructive: How Americans morphed into a mob

“What happened on January 6 involved lots and lots of people,” he said — “thousands of people.” Those people’s actions, he said, were not a “plot” but a storm of sorts that built its momentum spontaneously.

“Can such a dramatic, significant event like January 6 actually have such an undramatic explanation like crowd psychology and mob behavior?” Smith asked. Yes, he said: “In chaotic situations, small causes that happen in the moment can have tremendously large effects.”

The attorney for Ethan Nordean, the first defendant named in the seditious conspiracy indictment, briefly assigned blame for the Jan. 6, 2021, riot to former president Donald Trump and then claimed there was no evidence of planning by the Proud Boys before they stormed the Capitol.

Nicholas D. Smith, Nordean’s lawyer, said the riot was “an embarrassment to the country … a crass spectacle in front of the world. You don’t need to hear it from me: Attacks on law enforcement are unacceptable.” Smith said, “You will hear from witnesses who they understood was responsible for this. Who they understood was the prime mover that whipped up the crowd at his rally, that urged them onto the Capitol at his rally on Jan. 6.” The former president was not specifically named.

Smith acknowledged Nordean entered the Capitol but noted he didn’t bring any weapons, didn’t assault any officers and didn’t break anything. He said the Proud Boys could not have anticipated that a large mob would descend on the Capitol or that the Capitol Police would be unprepared. “A plot to use force that did not involve weapons,” Smith said.

“You will see at trial no evidence that supports the government’s conspiracy claim that these defendants plotted before January 6th to do what the government alleges,” Smith said. He said prosecutors used videos and photos out of context in their opening statement.

“Over and over and over,” Smith said, “the government has been told by witnesses there was no plan for Jan 6. You will see even the government’s own cooperating witnesses said that.”

The burning of a Black Lives Matter flag on the streets of D.C. in December 2020 was a key turning point for the Proud Boys, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason McCullough argued in his opening statement — even though he called the banner simply “a sign.”

Here’s what happened. Unknown members of the Proud Boys, roaming downtown after a pro-Trump rally in Washington on Dec. 12, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/historic-black-churches-attacked-during-pro-trump-rallies-saturday/2020/12/13/d897bfb0-3d54-11eb-8bc0-ae155bee4aff_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_94" target="_blank">took the banner</a> from Asbury United Methodist Church, a historic African American institution. Members of the group then stomped on the banner and set it on fire. Three other churches were also vandalized by Proud Boys that night.

Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio took full responsibility, saying on a podcast, “I was the one that lit it on fire … and I am damn proud that I did.” In a later interview with the House committee investigating Jan. 6, a Proud Boys leader <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000082294/pdf/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000082294.pdf" target=_blank>said Tarrio lied</a> to protect other members.

Tarrio <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/proud-boys-arrest-church-black-lives-matter/2021/01/05/18c58640-4f6a-11eb-83e3-322644d82356_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_96" target=_blank>was arrested on Jan. 4, 2021</a>, when he returned to D.C. in advance of the Capitol rally. Law enforcement took custody of Tarrio’s phone, and a judge <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/proud-boys-arrest-church-black-lives-matter/2021/01/05/18c58640-4f6a-11eb-83e3-322644d82356_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_96" target=_blank>expelled him from Washington pending trial</a>.

The arrest “enraged” the Proud Boys, McCullough said in his opening statement, leading them to conclude that the D.C. police were now “with antifa.”

But Tarrio “did not give up,” McCullough said: After his release on Jan. 5, Tarrio got a burner phone and again took charge of the Proud Boys’ “Ministry of Self Defense” group.

Tarrio <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/tarrio-guilty-plea-proud-boy/2021/07/19/19fbcd6a-e8aa-11eb-97a0-a09d10181e36_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_99" target=_blank>eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor</a>, serving four months in jail.

Judge Timothy J. Kelly barred prosecutors from saying the banner supported Black Lives Matter, saying it could prejudice the jury. So McCullough simply said “a sign” was burned, and showed video of the flames.

Of the more than 900 defendants who have been charged for their actions on Jan. 6, 2021, 44 have elected to take their case to trial so far, not including the current Proud Boys trial. Of that group, all but one have been convicted, and the sentences handed down so far have been roughly 21 months longer than for those who have pleaded guilty to felonies, according to a Washington Post analysis.

As of Jan. 2, there had been 39 felony trials and five misdemeanor trials. Defendants have been convicted in all 39 felony cases, with the acquittal coming in a misdemeanor bench trial. Twenty of the trials have been in front of a jury, and the government is 20-0.

Review of Jan. 6 cases finds judges give harsh lectures, lighter sentences

Only five people have gone to trial on the seditious conspiracy charge faced by the Proud Boys defendants, the defendants in last fall’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/29/rhodes-oathkeepers-sedition-verdict-jan6/?itid=lk_inline_manual_3&itid=lk_inline_manual_105" target=_blank>Oath Keepers trial</a>. Two of the five were found guilty, while the other three were acquitted. But the other three were convicted of obstruction of an official proceeding and other charges.

For those who have pleaded guilty, the average sentence has been about 28 months, according to The Post’s database, while those who have been convicted at trial have received an average sentence of more than 49 months. Pleas typically result in shorter sentences because defendants are given credit in federal sentencing guidelines for accepting responsibility. The longest sentence so far for all defendants is 10 years, for former New York City police officer Thomas Webster, convicted by a jury of assaulting police.

For more detailed analysis of the sentencings of Jan. 6 defendants after two years, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/01/06/jan6-capitol-riot-sentencings/?itid=lk_inline_manual_107" target=_blank>go here</a>.

Again using messages taken from cooperating Proud Boys’ phones, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason McCullough went from the hours leading up to the Capitol attack to the key minutes when police were overwhelmed and the building invaded.

First, just before 1 p.m., barriers around the grounds fell to the rioters.

“As the crowd and these men poured into the west front of the Capitol, Ethan Nordean, Joe Biggs and Zachary Rehl paused for a moment and exchanged high fives and fist bumps,” McCullough said. “They had breached police lines, and they were now positioned in the shadow of the Capitol.”

They then found a “violent confrontation” with police, McCullough said. Dominic Pezzola “ripped away an officer’s riot shield, stripping that officer of a defense that he desperately needed.” When Rehl reported via chat that the crowd was “at a standstill” with police, unable to move forward, McCullough said other Proud Boys leaders made their way to the front of the mob.

“The ‘normies,’ that is the civilians, had stopped pushing,” McCullough said, until the Proud Boys began leading the charge: “The officers struggled to hold the line, but they were again overrun.”

The rioters took the steps on the building’s west side. At 2:12 p.m., Pezzola “used his stolen riot shield to bust out two windows of the Capitol,” McCullough said, over video of the defendant. “This was the first point of access to the building.” Lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence were evacuated soon after.

Some of the Proud Boys then entered the building in what McCullough described as “a state of euphoria,” akin to when “a sports team wins the big game.”

Protesters overrun Capitol 

The government is providing the jury with a minute-by-minute chronology of where the Proud Boys were and what they were saying in the hours before the Capitol was overrun on Jan. 6, 2021. The intent of the presentation, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason McCullough said, is to show that the group was not there simply to protest, but <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/06/tarrio-proud-boys-seditious-conpiracy/?itid=lk_inline_manual_118" target=_blank>planned all along to physically attack the Capitol</a>.

The group’s leaders directed the men who had come to D.C. to meet at the Washington Monument at 10 a.m. and not to wear the group’s typical black-and-gold colors. “From there, we’re marching to the Capitol,” defendant Ethan Nordean messaged the group, even though the speech from President Donald Trump was scheduled for later that morning at the Ellipse, not the Capitol.

The leaders of the Proud Boys “expressed hope that the normies, the civilians of D.C., would burn that city to ash,” McCullough said. The leaders “had no intention of attending President Trump’s speech.” He said defendants Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl used megaphones and radios to keep the men together. His presentation incorporated video of the leaders speaking to their followers.

After marching around the Capitol, the group mustered about two blocks away until 12:45 p.m., when Nordean led them out. “He knew exactly where he wanted them to be,” McCullough said, showing Nordean’s text saying, “We’re gonna be going back to this roundabout over here,” meaning the Peace Circle west of the Capitol.

“At 12:53 p.m., they were doing what they’d come there to do,” McCullough said, his words accompanied by photos and video. “Using force in an effort to stop the transfer of power. They and the crowd surged forward, and Zachary Rehl filmed himself moving toward the police line.”

“Storm the Capitol,” Rehl can be heard saying as the clashes with Capitol Police officers begin, McCullough claimed while playing the recording.

At 12:56 p.m., Charles Donohoe, a leader who has pleaded guilty, messaged the group in mock surprise, “Oops, looks like we stormed the Capitol building.”

In his opening statement, prosecutor Jason McCullough told jurors that four Proud Boys were stabbed outside a bar in D.C. on Dec. 12, 2020.

First, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/proud-boys-protest-stabbing-arrest/2020/12/13/98c0f740-3d3f-11eb-8db8-395dedaaa036_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_129" target="_blank">altercation</a> followed a pro-Trump rally near the U.S. Capitol, which the House committee investigating Jan. 6 <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-REPORT/pdf/GPO-J6-REPORT.pdf" target="_blank">described</a> as helping far-right groups prepare for the Capitol attack.

Second, McCullough argued the Proud Boys “would use this as a rallying cry” to recruit for Jan. 6. Prosecutors allege then-Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio chose particular members for a “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/proud-boys-detention-hearing/2021/04/05/f2d8db02-92f9-11eb-a74e-1f4cf89fd948_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_130" target=_blank>ministry of self-defense</a>,” created in late December 2020, because of their ability to handle violence.

“In their view, the D.C. police let the stabber go,” McCullough said. “They believed this showed law enforcement in D.C. had sided against the Proud Boys.” That shift in perspective on law enforcement helps explain the group’s aggressive actions at the Capitol, the prosecutor said.

The defense can argue that the stabbings help show the “MOSD” was meant for protection.

Third, a Proud Boy who pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy and is expected to testify at trial, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/06/proud-boys-bertino-plea-seditious-conspiracy/?itid=lk_inline_manual_133" target=_blank>Jeremy Bertino</a>, was not in D.C. on Jan. 6 because he was injured in the stabbing.

On the evening on Dec. 12, 2020, as Proud Boys marched through the D.C. streets, police had successfully kept them separated from counterprotesters. Hundreds of Proud Boys then <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/for-dc-protests-proud-boys-settle-in-at-citys-oldest-hotel-and-its-bar/2020/12/27/0eb6afcc-3fb0-11eb-8bc0-ae155bee4aff_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_135" target="_blank">converged on the bar of the Hotel Harrington</a>, a few blocks from the White House. A young Black man later identified as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/proud-boys-protest-stabbing-arrest/2020/12/13/98c0f740-3d3f-11eb-8db8-395dedaaa036_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_135" target="_blank">Philip Johnson, 29, of the District,</a> had made his way into the crowd of Proud Boys and other Trump supporters. <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/12/13/one-person-stabbed-during-massive-proud-boys-brawl-in-dc/" target="_blank">Video of the incident</a> shows they began taunting him and calling him “antifa,” pushing him. (While Johnson wore all black, as antifa demonstrators often do, it was not clear that he expressed any political views). Johnson pulled out a knife; members of the crowd advanced and punched him repeatedly in the head. After that, <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000082294/pdf/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000082294.pdf" target="_blank">according to Bertino</a>, the man ran through the crowd swinging the knife as Proud Boys surrounded him.

One of the Proud Boys who suffered a stab wound was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/trump-rally-violence-proud-boys/2020/12/14/bf2f5826-3e26-11eb-8bc0-ae155bee4aff_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_136" target=_blank>also charged with assault</a>, according to D.C. police, but charges against both him and Johnson were dropped.

From the first day after the presidential election on Nov. 3, 2020, members of the Proud Boys began posting messages saying the results were fraudulent and that they would fight to overturn the result, according to texts and posts shown in court by prosecutors. It’s the same approach the government took in the first Oath Keepers trial last fall, showing the jury multiple texts and encrypted messages to build a case that the defendants had the intent to stop the electoral vote count on Jan. 6 and disrupt the transfer of power.

“We’re the ones that are going to take action,” defendant Joe Biggs said in a video posted on Nov. 4, 2020. “We’re probably going to have a civil war now.” The next day, Biggs wrote that it was time for war if “they steal this” election.

At a pro-Trump rally in Washington a week after the election, the Proud Boys paraded around the city and got into numerous fights with anti-Trump protesters. “We need to all come together,” defendant Ethan Nordean wrote after the rally, “and run these scumbags out of our cities and anyone supporting them. POYB.”

“Proud of Your Boy,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason McCullough translated. “That’s a phrase you will hear throughout this trial.”

Defendant Zachary Rehl also posted messages after the Trump rally, including an edited video with scenes of violence, attorney Sidney Powell saying she would “Release the kraken,” commentator Alex Jones yelling and images of fistfights in D.C. involving the Proud Boys.

At hundreds of hearings in D.C. federal court over the past two years, prosecutors have said that while an individual defendant might not have launched or led the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, they are culpable as part of the mob.

There was no such caveat in court Thursday: Prosecutor Jason McCullough put up pictures of four out of the five Proud Boys on trial and declared, “These were the leaders of the attack on the Capitol.”

Proud Boys Chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio chose defendants Ethan Nordean and Joseph Biggs as the Jan. 6 senior “leaders on the ground,” McCullough said; Zachary Rehl was in “the next tier of operational leaders,” organizing men and equipment in advance of the riot.

McCullough also put three men who have pleaded guilty and cooperated with prosecutors on the screen: Jeremy Bertino, Charles Donohoe and John Stewart.

These leaders “recruited other men to help them achieve their goal,” McCullough said. Dominic Pezzola was one such recruit, “considered by some to be a rising star.” He noted that Tarrio featured Pezzola in a December 2020 social media post labeled “Lords of War,” with the hashtag “J6.”

The group was called “Ministry of Self Defense,” but McCullough argued that was just propaganda and the group’s plan was to use force to keep President Donald Trump in power.

“Ministry of Self Defense was just an effort by Enrique Tarrio to manipulate public perception,” McCullough said. “Enrique Tarrio was a master at creating the public perception that put himself and his men in the best possible light.”

The defendants were neatly groomed, dressed in dark suits and ties and white shirts. Four are in dark-rimmed glasses. Their appearances are a striking contrast from how all but Tarrio appeared at the Capitol on Jan. 6 in widely publicized images, holding radios, a megaphone and a police riot shield.

Spencer Hsu

Prosecutors played video for the jury of the famous moment from the 2020 presidential debate when Donald Trump was asked about the Proud Boys, and the president said, “Stand back and stand by.” It has been cited as a moment the group took as a supportive call to action.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason McCullough followed the clip by saying, “It’s important for you to know the Proud Boys organization is not on trial today. Many Proud Boys who were angry about the election, they took no part in the mission on January 6.”

Instead, McCullough said, pointing to the defense table, “This case is about these Proud Boys, and how these Proud Boys used their status within the organization, and their relationship with others, to bring about crime in the Capitol on January 6.”

He then turned and pointed to the head of the group. “The leader of the conspiracy to stop the certification is Enrique Tarrio. He’s the chairman of the Proud Boys, he lives in Miami, Florida. He refers to himself as Noble Lead.”

A photo of Tarrio was shown on the screen for the jury, and the prosecution continues to augment their opening statement with photos of the defendants.

dc protests

Invoking President Donald Trump’s infamous words at a 2020 presidential debate, federal prosecutor Jason McCullough kicked off the seditious conspiracy trial of five members of the Proud Boys by saying, “They did not stand back, they did not stand by.”

Echoing the argument used successfully at trial against Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes late last year, McCullough began by calling the “peaceful transfer or power” between presidents throughout the nation’s history “nothing less than a miracle.” The Proud Boys, he said, “sought to change that history.”

Before the election, Trump had told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” — a clip prosecutors played less than 10 minutes into opening statements.

“Some battle lines were drawn,” McCullough said. Once it was clear that Trump had lost, McCullough said, the Proud Boys were “calling for war.”

Longtime Proud Boys chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio is on trial with four others: Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola.

“These defendants believed it was their mission to use force to keep Donald Trump in office,” McCullough told jurors.

Five members of the Proud Boys are on trial in the third seditious conspiracy trial of the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack, including Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, the longtime chairman of the  far-right group.

Learn more about what the men are charged with and what they’re accused of doing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/01/12/proud-boys-defendants-sedtious-conspiracy/?itid=lk_inline_manual_170" target=_blank>here</a>.

What is seditious conspiracy? Why is longtime Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio being charged if he wasn’t at the U.S. Capitol on the day of the riot? And are how are Donald Trump, the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers connected? Washington Post reporters who have been following the Jan. 6 investigation for the past two years answer these questions and more <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/01/12/proud-boys-seditious-conspiracy-trial-tarrio/?itid=lk_inline_manual_173" target=_blank>here</a>.

Jury Selection Begins For Oath Keepers Trial In Washington, DC

Most potential jurors appearing in court said they had heard of the Proud Boys — and not positively.

“They conquer through fear and terror,” one said. On Jan. 6, they “fired people up with a significant amount of dangerous rhetoric and misinformation to engage in violent activities,” said another. Potential jurors described the Proud Boys as “white nationalists,” “white supremacists” and “white separatists.”

Jury selection took about two weeks as the federal district court struggled to find 12 D.C. residents who could put aside preconceptions of the group that was involved in violent altercations not just at the U.S. Capitol on <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/january-6-capitol-riot/?itid=lk_inline_manual_4&itid=lk_inline_manual_178" target=_blank>Jan. 6</a>, 2021, but on city streets in the weeks leading up to the riot.

Read more about jury selection in the Proud Boys trial <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/01/01/proud-boys-jury-selection/?itid=lk_inline_manual_179" target=_blank>here</a>.

Finalist, Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, National Emmy Award nominee, Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service, Ursula and Gilbert Farfel Prize for Excellence in Investigative Reporting, American Immigration Lawyers Association Media Leadership Award,

Harvard University, B.A. in English

Spencer S. Hsu is an investigative reporter, two-time Pulitzer finalist and national Emmy Award nominee. Hsu has covered homeland security, immigration, Virginia politics and Congress.

George Washington University, BA in Journalism and Political Science

Rachel Weiner covers federal courts in Washington, D.C. and Richmond, Va. 

Pulitzer Prize for The Washington Post's breaking news coverage of Virginia Tech shooting, 2008

Pulitzer Prize for The Washington Post's investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, 2022

Rites of Burial

University of Notre Dame, BA in English and American Studies

Tom Jackman has been covering criminal justice for The Washington Post since 1998 and anchors the True Crime blog. He previously covered crime and courts for the Kansas City Star.

U.S. says Proud Boys ‘did not stand back,’ sought to keep Trump in office

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