Background
5 members of the Proud Boys were charged with seditious conspiracy for their role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol building. Prosecutors claimed that Enrique Tarrio, the leader and chairman of the Proud Boys at the time, conspired with Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, and Dominic Pezzola, to storm the US Capitol building for the purpose of overturning the 2020 election results, by riling up a large crowd of "normie" pro-Trump protesters and using them as a battering ram to breach police defensive lines and occupy the Capitol building. The defense acknowledged that some Proud Boys participated in the Capitol riot on January 6, but denied that the defendants actually planned in advance of January 6 to storm the Capitol.
The evidence presented by the prosecution to support the seditious conspiracy charges included video footage from January 6, but focused primarily around online activity (mostly Telegram and Parler posts) demonstrating that the Proud Boys made statements that could be interpreted as incriminating evidence of planning in advance to storm the Capitol. The prosecution filed an indictment against the 5 Proud Boy conspirators that lists Telegram and Parler messages prosecutors believe best support the seditious conspiracy charges. All of the defendants, except Dominic Pezzola, were found guilty of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to at least 15 years in prison. Here, I list all of the incriminating Telegram and Parler messages quoted in the indictment (along with some others that came up during the trial) and analyze each message.
I take the position that the seditious conspiracy charges were largely baseless, and all 5 defendants should have been acquitted of that charge due to reasonable doubt. There is no doubt the Proud Boys participated in the Capitol riots on January 6 and enthusiastically supported and praised the Jan 6 rioters. But the prosecution's evidence that the Proud Boys actually planned in advance to storm the Capitol is incredibly weak and unconvincing. Throughout thousands of Telegram messages in evidence, there are zero references to any such plan and zero discussions about the details of such a plan. That is, there are NO Telegram messages where a Proud Boy says something like “Okay guys, so this is how we're going to storm the Capitol. First, Team A will be positioned at location X, and Team B will be positioned at location Y. Both teams will wait for the signal, etc...”. Rather, there are a handful of non-sequitur references to the Capitol building that, out of context, might appear incriminating to some people, along with vague references to some kind of plan with no specific details. This is especially problematic for the prosecution, because the Proud Boys often discussed other incriminating topics in private Telegram group chats they believed at the time to be secure. The only evidence even vaguely resembling an actual detailed plan to storm the Capitol is the mysterious “1776 Returns” document, which, as discussed below, turns out to be largely irrelevant to this case.
The majority of the Telegram messages included in the indictment demonstrate only that the Proud Boys believed the 2020 election was stolen and often posted vague threats of non-specific future violence (e.g. Joseph Biggs saying things like “It's time for fucking War if they steal this shit”). This evidence arguably demonstrates that the defendants are potentially dangerous people who supported the Jan 6 rioters after the Capitol riot began, not that they actually orchestrated the riot or planned in advance to storm the Capitol. There is also a large body of exculpatory evidence (evidence supporting a not guilty verdict) that must be evaluated alongside the incriminating evidence reviewed below.
This webpage analyzes each of the Telegram/Parler messages mentioned in the indictment one by one. I also encourage readers to read the actual Telegram/Parler evidence and come to their own conclusion.
Sources Of Evidence (so you can reach your own conclusion)
The prosecution's evidence mostly centered around Telegram and Parler messages from the defendants, particularly the Telegram messages from private chat groups affiliated with a chapter of the Proud Boys called “The Ministry of Self Defense” (MOSD). As an organization, the Proud Boys (Proud Boys International, L.L.C.) were divided into several autonomous regional chapters, loosely governed by Chairman Enrique Tarrio. In December of 2020, Enrique Tarrio created “The Ministry of Self Defense” as a new, national-level chapter for organizing national events. The prosecution argued that Tarrio established the MOSD chapter specifically for the purpose of planning the January 6 insurrection. Therefore, the majority of the prosecution's evidence consists of messages pulled from multiple private Telegram chat groups affiliated with the MOSD chapter of the Proud Boys.
Most of the relevant evidence is available publicly. Some of it can be found in the Government Exhibits filed electronically with PACER, which I have organized into separate PDF files for each Telegram group (linked below). The Telegram evidence from Government Exhibits usually consists of excerpts selected by the prosecution that omit most of the surrounding context. Fortunately, we also have a more complete record of some Telegram groups thanks to leaked documents (authenticated by the Seattle Times) containing the Telegram chat history recovered by the FBI using forensic software called Cellebrite. Finally, I have also personally recovered a nearly complete chat history of one of the private MOSD chat groups (MOSD Ops) from Telegram directly.
Telegram Evidence from Government Exhibits:
MOSD Private Telegram Chat Groups:
MOSD ProspectsMOSD Leadership Chat
MOSD Main (for regular members and leadership)
MOSD Ops
MOSD Private Telegram Chat Groups created after Enrique Tarrio was arrested on January 4, 2021:
New MOSD (Replaced MOSD Leadership Chat)MOSD Main 2 (Replaced MOSD Main)
Boots on the Ground
MOSD Leaders (Post Jan 6 discussion)
Misc. Private Telegram Chat Groups involving the defendants:
Skull And BonesEast Coast Rally Command
Official Presidents Chat
Operation DC Street Sweepers
Florida Poor Boys State Chat
Croqueta Wars Chat
State Head Leadership Chat
Private DMs, Group Chats or Text Messages:
Enrique Tarrio Private DMs and Group ChatsZachary Rehl Private DMs and Group Chats
Leaked Telegram Chat Histories recovered by FBI using Cellebrite:
MOSD Main Full Chat History (12/27/2020 — 1/1/2021)
MOSD Ops Full Chat History (1/1/2021 — 1/4/2021)
MOSD Ops Full Chat History (1/1/2021 — 1/4/2021)
Telegram Chat Histories recovered from Telegram directly by author of this webpage:
Parler Evidence:
Archived Parler Data Sources:
Zenodo Parler Database (dataset of over 98 million Parler posts)DDO Secrets scraped Parler data
Reconstructed Parler Posting Histories:
Reconstructed Parler Posts from Enrique Tarrio (@NobleLead)Reconstructed Parler Posts from Ethan Nordean (@REBELRUFIO)
Reconstructed Parler Posts from Joseph Biggs (@JoeBiggs)
Reconstructed Parler Posts from @TheProudBoys
Video Evidence:
MOSD Leadership Video Conference (12/30/2020)
MOSD Leadership Video Conference Transcript
Jan 6 Livestream — March of the Proud Boys
Proud Boys Arrive at Peace Circle Before Initial Breach
Zach Rehl iPhone video — Breach of Outer Barricade (mirrored version)
Joe Biggs' iCloud Account — Breach at the Peace Circle
Jeremy Bertino's Jan 6 Telegram Screen Capture
Initial Breach at Peace Circle
Ryan Samsel Breaches First Barricade
Ryan Samsel Breaches First Barricade — Alternate Perspective
Ryan Samsel Speaks To Joe Biggs
MOSD Leadership Video Conference Transcript
Jan 6 Livestream — March of the Proud Boys
Proud Boys Arrive at Peace Circle Before Initial Breach
Zach Rehl iPhone video — Breach of Outer Barricade (mirrored version)
Joe Biggs' iCloud Account — Breach at the Peace Circle
Jeremy Bertino's Jan 6 Telegram Screen Capture
Initial Breach at Peace Circle
Ryan Samsel Breaches First Barricade
Ryan Samsel Breaches First Barricade — Alternate Perspective
Ryan Samsel Speaks To Joe Biggs
Key (How to Read this Webpage):
This webpage analyzes each relevant paragraph in the indictment (and other documents) that presents allegedly incriminating Telegram and Parler messages. The analysis is organized in a 3 column layout. The left-most column contains the date and time associated with each piece of incriminating evidence. The middle column quotes the indictment (or other document) verbatim, and then provides some context for the quoted Telegram/Parler evidence. The right column analyzes the incriminating content.
Text from
the indictment and other court documents is quoted in a light red box like this.
Date |
Incriminating Messages |
Assessment/Comments |
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Indictment reads:
14. a. On November 5, 2020, BIGGS posted on social media, “It's time for fucking War
if they steal this shit,” referring to the Presidential election.
Full context (from Parler):
|
Included in the indictment to establish that Joe Biggs, and by extension the Proud Boys as a group,
was angry about the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election, believing that it was
stolen. This is clearly meant to establish motive and state of mind, but arguably has little
relevance to the conspiracy charges. Joe Biggs and the other Proud Boys were certainly unhappy with the outcome of the 2020 election
and sometimes expressed this anger with threats of non-specific violence. But that does not demonstrate that the
Proud Boys devised a plan in advance of January 6th to storm the US Capitol building.
Joe Biggs' belligerent Parler post is equally as compatible with a spontaneous, unplanned riot as it is with a formal conspiracy
devised in advance of January 6th.
The indictment omits the part of Joe Biggs' post that grounds his threat of “fucking war” in a more specific historical context. Biggs was likely referring to media reports at the time from conservative outlets (whether “fake news” or not) claiming that Republican election monitors were blocked from effectively monitoring the vote count in certain locales. |
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Indictment reads:
13. a. On November 6, 2020, TARRIO posted a message that read, “The media constantly
accuses us of wanting to start a civil war. Careful what the fuck you ask for we
don't want to start one...but we will sure as fuck finish one.”
Full context (from Parler):
Enrique Tarrio · @NobleLead
“Kill first ask later.”
The media constantly accuses us of wanting to start a civil war. Careful what the fuck you ask for we don't want to start one... but we will sure as fuck finish one. 
|
Included in the indictment to establish that Enrique Tarrio, and by extension the Proud Boys as a group,
used incendiary rhetoric and issued threats of non-specific political violence. This arguably has little relevance
to the conspiracy charges.
The indictment omits the original context. Enrique Tarrio's Parler post was responding to a tweet from @Javiercousteau (see archive.org version, this user goes by @doubleccoustea as of 2025). The tweet made the absurd, histrionic claim that “[Proud Boys in DC are] approaching black people with handcuffs and threatening to kidnap folk” and suggested that “KILL FIRST ASK LATER” would have been an appropriate counter-measure against the Proud Boys. Enrique Tarrio's post is meant to ironically juxtapose the media's focus on the Proud Boys' violent behavior with violent rhetoric coming from a political enemy of the Proud Boys, presumably to highlight what Tarrio saw as bias or hypocrisy in the media. |
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Indictment reads:
13. b. On November 12,2020, TARRIO posted a message that read, “Fuck Unity. No
quarter. Raise the black flag.”
Full context (from Parler):
|
Included in the indictment to suggest to the reader that Enrique Tarrio (and by extension the Proud Boys as a group) was
a political extremist with no interest in peace
nor compromise. This is of course meant to establish motive or state of mind, but it arguably has little relevance to the conspiracy charges.
Enrique Tarrio was certainly unhappy with the outcome of the 2020 election and he sometimes expressed this unhappiness with vaguely violent
or threatening rhetoric. But
that does not demonstrate that the Proud Boys devised a plan in advance of January 6th to storm the US Capitol building.
Moreover, the indictment omits the original context of Tarrio's Parler post, wherein he was replying to an earlier post from Parler user @LisaMarieBoothe that said “I don’t want unity. I want to work to defeat Democrats in the upcoming elections.” Tarrio expressed agreement with this sentiment using somewhat colorful language (“fuck unity ... no quarter”), but the level of implicit violence in Tarrio's reply is negligible. Tarrio's post here is qualitatively indistinguishable from typical political discourse on social media, and was probably not even worth including in the indictment. Furthermore, Enrique Tarrio also posted another message on Parler that called for political change via inspiration instead of force or violence. That post included an attached promotional video (a recruitment or PR tool for the Proud Boys) that was clearly intended to evoke things like patriotism, sacrifice and brotherhood. The video contained brief footage of violent street-level brawling with counter-protesters, but the music and narration framed this violence as defensive, noble and heroic. While this post was arguably little more than Proud Boy propaganda, Parler posts like this, at the very least, reveal a certain level of nuance that was missing from the indictment. |
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Indictment reads:
13. c. On November 16, 2020, TARRIO posted a message that read, “If Biden steals this
election, [the Proud Boys] will be political prisoners. We won't go quietly...I
promise.”
Full context (from Parler):
Enrique Tarrio · @NobleLead
If Biden steals this election, @TheProudBoys will be political prisoners.
We won't go quietly...I promise. 
|
Included in the indictment to establish that the Proud Boys were unhappy with the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election, and that they expressed their unhappiness with vague threats of non-specific violence. This post also establishes that the Proud Boys feared a looming Biden Administration, suggesting that the Proud Boys had become desperate and were willing to resort to violence. This is meant to establish motive and state of mind, but arguably has little relevance to the conspiracy charges. Again, Enrique Tarrio was certainly unhappy with the outcome of the 2020 election and he sometimes expressed this unhappiness with incendiary rhetoric on social media. But that does not demonstrate that the Proud Boys actually devised a plan in advance of January 6th to storm the US Capitol building. Again, Tarrio's belligerent Parler post is equally compatible with a spontaneous, unplanned riot as it is with a formal conspiracy devised in advance of January 6th. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Indictment reads:
14. b. On November 24, 2020, BIGGS, in response to a social media post calling for unity
in response to the results of the presidential election, posted, “No bitch. This is war”
Full context (from Parler):
Joe Biggs · @JoeBiggs
No bitch. This is war. 
|
Included in the indictment to suggest that Joe Biggs, and by extension the Proud Boys as a collective, was angry about the outcome of the 2020 election and willing to resort to political violence. This is meant to establish motive, state of mind, and a general willingness to resort to violence, but arguably has little relevance to the conspiracy charges. Joe Biggs was certainly unhappy with the outcome of the 2020 election and he sometimes expressed this unhappiness with threats of non-specific violence. But that does not demonstrate that the Proud Boys devised a plan in advance of January 6th to storm the US Capitol building. These sort of belligerent Parler posts are equally compatible with a spontaneous, unplanned riot as they are with a formal conspiracy to storm the Capitol devised in advance of January 6th. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Indictment reads:
13. d. On November 25, 2020, TARRIO reposted a social media post by Joe Biden that
stated, “We need to remember: We're at war with a virus — not with each other.”
TARRIO then posted, “No, YOU need to remember the American people are at
war with YOU. No Trump... No peace. No quarter.”
Full context (from Parler):
Enrique Tarrio · @NobleLead
No, YOU need to remember the American people are at war with YOU.
No Trump... No peace. No quarter. 
|
Included in the indictment to suggest that Enrique Tarrio, and by extension the Proud Boys as a group, was angry about the outcome of the 2020 election and completely disinterested in moving forward peacefully, threatening non-specific violence if his grievances were to remain unaddressed. This is meant to establish motive and state of mind, but again arguably has little relevance to the conspiracy charges. Enrique Tarrio's belligerent Parler post is equally compatible with a spontaneous, unplanned riot as it is with a secret plot to storm the Capitol devised in advance of January 6th. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Indictment reads:
14. c. On November 27, 2020, NORDEAN posted on social media, “We tried playing
nice and by the rules, now you will deal with the monster you created. The spirit of
1776 has resurfaced and has created groups like the Proudboys and we will not be
extinguished. We will grow like the flame that fuels us and spread like love that
guides us. We are unstoppable, unrelenting and now ...unforgiving. Good luck to
all you traitors of this country we so deeply love ...you're going to need it.”
Full context (from Parler):
Ethan Nordean · @REBELRUFIO
|
Included in the indictment to suggest that Ethan Nordean (a.k.a. Rufio), and by extension the Proud Boys as a collective, was angry about the outcome of the 2020 election, and used incendiary and melodramatic language to communicate an implicit threat of non-specific violence. This is meant to establish motive and state of mind, along with a general willingness to resort to violence, but arguably has little relevance to the conspiracy charges. Again, Ethan Nordean's belligerent post is equally as compatible with a spontaneous, unplanned riot as it is with a secret plot to storm the Capitol devised in advance of January 6th. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Indictment reads:
29. On December 19, 2020, shortly after plans for the rally on January 6 were publicly
announced, BIGGS sent a private message to TARRIO in which he stated that the Proud Boys
“recruit losers who wanna drink.” BIGGS suggested, “Let's get radical and get real men.”
Full context from recovered text messages (Government Exhibit 525-5):
|
Included in the indictment to emphasize that the Proud Boys upped their recruitment efforts in response to the
announcement of the upcoming Jan 6 rally in DC, and that they were interested in getting "radical" and recruiting "real men",
suggesting to the reader that the Proud Boys were now interested mostly in recruiting people who were willing to engage in
political violence. This was also meant to bolster the prosecution's claim that the
Proud Boys started conspiring to storm the Capitol
as
early as December 19, 2020, beginning with a ramped up recruitment
effort:
Sentencing memorandum reads:
However, the indictment omitted Joe Biggs' follow up posts 12 seconds later. Biggs clarified that he didn't mean anything
in a "crazy way", but the meaning of Biggs' post is ambiguous due to the typo. Further posts from
Biggs somewhat softened the impact of "get radical and [recruit] real men" by clarifying that Biggs mostly meant that the
Proud Boys needed "to portray a more masculine vibe" that better reflected how the Proud Boys wanted to be perceived. Biggs seemed
primarily concerned with how the Proud Boys were perceived publicly, which is appropriate given that
Biggs was put in charge
of "marketing" later that week after the “Ministry of Self Defense” (MOSD) chapter was established. However, the intended
takeaway of this piece of evidence is likely that Biggs (and by extension, the Proud Boys collectively)
began to recruit "real men" who were willing to "stand up and fight" (i.e. engage in political violence).
The seditious conspiracy began at least as early as December 19, 2020.
Tarrio, Nordean, Biggs, Rehl, and other leaders of the Proud Boys organization intentionally
recruited men prepared to engage in physical violence, if necessary.
However, Enrique Tarrio never responded to anything Biggs said here, so the exhibit doesn't really demonstrate that the Proud Boys actually ramped up recruitment efforts in any significant way specifically in preparation for January 6th. |
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Indictment reads:
31. On December 20, 2020, PERSON-3 posted a message to the MOSD Leaders Group
that stated, “I am assuming most of the protest will be at the capital building given what's going
on inside.” In response, TARRIO proposed a video chat, which would take place on December 21,
to discuss the MOSD and January 6.
Full context from Telegram - MOSD Leaders group chat (Government Exhibit 501-5):
|
This Telegram conversation was included in the indictment to demonstrate to the reader that the Proud Boys were focused on the
US Capitol building as early as December 20th, 2020, and
to establish that the Proud Boys were making plans and having Zoom meetings about Jan 6 at that time.
However, like much of the prosecution's evidence, these Telegram posts establish that the Proud Boys were planning something, but provide no information about WHAT the Proud Boys were actually planning. For a typical jury member, or anyone unfamiliar with the history of the Proud Boys and the political rallies they attended throughout 2020, it's easy to read these posts and assume (due to basic human confirmation bias) that any discussion about planning for Jan 6, or any mention of the Capitol building, automatically corroborates the prosecution's seditious conspiracy case. After all, what else would the Proud Boys be planning on doing in Washington DC on Jan 6, if not storming the Capitol? But the indictment misleadingly omits significant historical context here that reveals this exchange over Telegram to be nothing more than typical event planning. The Proud Boys attended many rallies throughout 2020, most of which were organized by conservative activist groups that had obtained event permits to legally hold a rally in some public space. In 2020, the “Stop The Steal” coalition organized two “Million MAGA March” rallies in Washington DC on November 14th and December 12th, both of which were very similar conceptually to the Jan 6 rally. The “main events” of the two “Million MAGA March” rallies in November and December of 2020 were organized by a non-profit called “Women for America First”, which obtained the necessary event permits to hold a large demonstration in Freedom Plaza and a march to the Supreme Court. (The Proud Boys participated in both of these rallies.) The same non-profit also obtained an event permit to hold a major rally in DC on January 6th, 2021, located in Freedom Plaza (see NPS permit 21-0212 and amended permit 21-0274) just like the earlier “Million MAGA March” rallies. (This is why some Proud Boys originally assumed the Jan 6 rally would take place in Freedom Plaza.) At the same time, multiple small grassroots organizations obtained event permits to hold various “mini-rallies” at locations near the US Capitol building on January 5th and 6th, 2021: 
Originally, the main event of the Jan 6 rally was to be a large demonstration in Freedom Plaza (NPS event permit 21-0274), but the location was later changed to the Ellipse (NPS event permit 21-0278) after President Trump announced that he would give a speech on January 6th. However, on December 20th, 2020, when the Telegram conversation between Enrique Tarrio and Johnny Blackbeard occurred, nobody knew that President Trump would be giving a speech on January 6th. Thus, at this early stage, the main event of the Jan 6 rally was to be located at Freedom Plaza and various smaller events were to be held at locations near the Capitol building. For example, an organization called “Latinos For Trump” had arranged a “YUGE freedom rally” to be held at “Area 7” (300 First Street NE) by the Capitol between 10 AM and 12 PM on January 6th, 2021. When the Proud Boys attended a rally like this, their activities typically involved attending the official events, marching through the streets chanting slogans, giving speeches in front of crowds, and sometimes providing security for high-profile conservatives and/or ordinary pro-Trump protesters attending the rally. Thus, when Johnny Blackheard asked Enrique Tarrio “what locations do you absolutely need to stop at?”, he was thinking about the locations of the official events at the Jan 6 rally. Many of these official events — including the Latinos For Trump event — were to be held near the Capitol building, which is likely part of the reason Johnny Blackheard assumed that “most of the protest will be at the capital [sic]”. (Also, early promotional materials for the Jan 6 rally implied the Capitol would be the main location.) In fact, Enrique Tarrio was the Florida State Director for Latinos For Trump and had arranged for some Proud Boys in his chapter to provide security at the Latinos For Trump event on January 6th. Tarrio would have therefore “absolutely need[ed] to stop” at the Latinos For Trump event stage near the Capitol. It's also very likely that Enrique Tarrio was scheduled to give a speech on January 6th at the Latinos For Trump event stage (see Captain Trump's post in the MOSD Leaders group chat, the Parler post from Loomer, and the trial testimony of George Mesa and Jeremy Bertino). Finally, the indictment also uses misleading language to suggest that Enrique Tarrio setup the Zoom meeting IN RESPONSE to Johnny Blackbeard's statement about the Capitol, thereby subtly connecting the Capitol building to whatever the Proud Boys discussed during that Zoom meeting. But Tarrio's response came over 20 minutes after Johnny Blackbeard's comment about the Capitol, and was actually a response to Johnny Blackbeard's earlier question asking where Tarrio “absolutely need[s] to stop at” on Jan 6. Indeed, this paragraph of the indictment exemplifies a typical pattern repeated throughout the conspiracy trial: the prosecution often took a snippet of some innocuous Telegram conversation (often alluding to some kind of “planning” and/or referencing the Capitol building) and framed it as incriminating evidence of a secret plot to storm the Capitol. This proved to be very effective due to basic human confirmation bias. |
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Indictment reads:
33. On December 27, 2020, TARRIO created another encrypted messaging group to
recruit potential members of the MOSD (the “MOSD Prospect Group”). TARRIO stressed that
members of the chapter were expected to follow directions of MOSD leadership, which TARRIO
and others emphasized by telling members, among other things, to “Fit in [] or fuckoff.”
Full context from Telegram - MOSD Prospects (Govt Exhibit 513-1):
Full context from
MOSD video conference
(see full transcript):
Full context from MOSD MAIN Telegram group:
|
Included in the indictment to suggest that the “Ministry of Self Defense” (MOSD) chapter, created by
Proud Boy chairman Enrique Tarrio, was a strict chapter with a militaristic structure, created mostly
for the purpose of planning to storm the US Capitol on Jan 6. The indictment focuses on the rigidly non-democratic
nature of the MOSD, exemplified by the catch-phrase “fit in or fuck off”.
A few examples of Enrique Tarrio and other MOSD leaders exhibiting this “fit in or fuck off” attitude are listed in the left column. However, the indictment oversells the level of strictness enforced by Tarrio and the MOSD leadership. The MOSD chapter was certainly no democracy, as is clear from the initial announcement on Telegram informing other Proud Boys about the new MOSD chapter. However, the tone and verbiage used by MOSD leaders Zach Rehl and Enrique Tarrio during the MOSD video conference on December 30, 2020 (see transcript) reveals that the MOSD chapter wasn't always quite as strict as the indictment would have us believe: The phrase “fit in or fuck off” first appeared on the MOSD Application Form that Enrique Tarrio required prospective members to sign before they were permitted to join the MOSD chapter. However, Tarrio only actually said this phrase once on Telegram (in the MOSD MAIN group chat) when another Proud Boy named Brien James criticized the structure of the MOSD chapter and disapproved of Joe Biggs being assigned a leadership role. Enrique Tarrio told Brien James to “Fit in...or fuck off”. This was really the only occasion (at least on Telegram) where Tarrio strictly enforced anything in the MOSD chapter. Also, simply reading through a typical MOSD Telegram group chat — often filled with silly memes and vulgar jokes — should immediately dispel the notion that the Proud Boys were even capable of being particularly serious on a consistent basis. The indictment also obscures the actual purpose of the MOSD chapter and the historical context that prompted its creation. The indictment suggests the MOSD was created specifically to pre-plan the attack on the Capitol building. But Telegram chats and the MOSD video conference video make it absolutely clear that the MOSD chapter was created to address serious disciplinary and organizational problems that came to light during the previous MAGA rally in Washington DC on December 12th, 2020 when four Proud Boys, including Jeremy Bertino, were stabbed and subsequently hospitalized following an altercation with a counter-protester. Enrique Tarrio blamed that disaster on insubordinate Proud Boys who often broke marching formation to run off and attack random counter-protesters or hecklers on the sidelines. Thus, during the MOSD video conference on December 30, 2020, when Jeremy Bertino emphasized the strictness of the MOSD chapter (repeating the catch-phrase “fit in or fuck off”), he also explained why the new MOSD chapter was so strict, and it had nothing to do with some secret plan to storm the Capitol: This is consistent with Enrique Tarrio's post in the "Skull and Bones" Telegram group chat (Government Exhibit 500-69), where he elaborates on the purpose of the MOSD chapter, saying it is meant to prevent aggressive and undisciplined behavior at national events, and make it easier to control and direct large numbers of Proud Boys while marching in formation at rallies: Additionally, the phrase "fit in or fuck off" appeared first on the MOSD Application Form (see the archived original Google doc) that Enrique Tarrio required all prospective MOSD members to fill out and sign, which included a list of statements that prospective members had to agree to in order to join the MOSD chapter. But the application form also contains very compelling exculpatory evidence, suggesting the Proud Boys had no intention of initiating violence on January 6th. All prospective MOSD members had to agree to the statement:
I will always act in self defense and I will never initiate a confrontation. Is this something you can agree on?
*
This is also consistent with Enrique Tarrio's comments during the MOSD video conference on December 30th, 2020 (see transcript), where he explained that the purpose of the MOSD chapter was to ensure that the Proud Boys always act defensively rather than offensively (hence the name “Ministry of Self Defense”), and to ensure that individual Proud Boys do not break ranks or act agressively during rallies: All of this is consistent with private discussions the MOSD Proud Boys had amongst themselves on Telegram on December 30, 2020, the same day as the MOSD video conference. Many Proud Boys agreed with Enrique Tarrio's premise that the previous rally on December 12th, 2020 was a disaster, and that things needed to change. For example, one Proud Boy posted the following in the MOSD MAIN Telegram group chat: Indeed, the entire MOSD video conference held on December 30, 2020 (see transcript), available on video in its entirety, is very strong exculpatory evidence. During this video conference (which occurred about a week before January 6th) the Proud Boys discussed the purpose of the MOSD chapter for over an hour and a half, yet there was zero mention of any plan to storm the Capitol building. The discussion was mostly about addressing the disciplinary problems experienced during the previous rally in December, and establishing new chapter policies (e.g. splitting up into smaller ten-man squads and forbidding intoxication during rallies) to make it easier for leadership to control and direct large numbers of Proud Boys while maintaining formation during marches. |
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Indictment reads:
34. On December 27, 2020, Donohoe reposted a message to prospective members in
the MOSD Prospect Group in which he stated that the D.C. government was expected to limit
access to Washington, D.C., on January 6. Donohoe's message stated “They want to limit the
presence so that they can deny Trump has the People's support. We can't let them succeed. This
government is run FOR the People, BY the People....Congress needs a reintroduction to that fact.”
Full context from MOSD MAIN Telegram group:
|
Included in the indictment probably because it establishes that the Proud Boys planned in advance to travel to Washington DC,
and because Charles Donohoe's statement can be interpreted as a threat to Congress.
However, Charles Donohoe's full post reads more like a helpful travel advisory than some kind of threat. Donohoe is basically exhorting the other Proud Boys to show up in Washington DC in defiance of Mayor Bowser's attempts to limit access to the city, which Donohoe clearly viewed as an attempt to prevent Trump supporters from exercising their right to protest (“limit the 1st Amendment”) in DC. |
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Indictment reads:
36. On December 28, 2020, TARRIO posted a message in the MOSD Prospect Group
in which he stated that the “DC trip” would consist of “two groups” — the MOSD and everyone
else — and that no one should be in colors.
Full context from MOSD MAIN Telegram group:
|
Included in the indictment presumably because it establishes that the trip to Washington DC for the Jan 6 rally involved
some level of pre-planning (dividing into two groups), and
also because it establishes that the MOSD chapter (Group 1) was a special chapter with a special mission.
Obviously, the implication here is that this special mission was a secret plan to storm the Capitol.
Once again, the full Telegram post contains exculpatory information that was omitted in the indictment. In the full post, Enrique Tarrio said that the MOSD chapter will be running a “training exercise” during “the 5th at night and 6th throughout the day”. This is not particularly compatible with the prosecution's seditious conspiracy case. If the MOSD Proud Boys truly had plans to storm the Capitol on January 6th, it would have made little sense for Enrique Tarrio to declare that the MOSD chapter would be running a “training exercise” on January 6th “throughout the day”. However, this is quite consistent with Tarrio's comments during the MOSD video conference on December 30th, 2020, when he reiterated that the MOSD chapter would use the January 6th rally “as a training exercise”. Similarly, in an announcement posted in the MOSD MAIN Telegram group chat on December 29th, 2020, Tarrio stated that “we are going to be using the 6th as a test”. Of course, the prosecution claimed that the MOSD chapter was created specifically for the purpose of planning in secret to storm the Capitol building on January 6th, 2021. Moreover, the prosecution also claimed that the MOSD Proud Boys' primary objective for the Jan 6 rally was to execute their pre-planned assault on the Capitol. I have argued that the prosecution's claims are incorrect and not supported by the evidence. But if there was no secret conspiracy to storm the Capitol, then what was the Proud Boys' actual plan for the Jan 6 rally? The Proud Boys' itinerary for an earlier “Stop The Steal” rally in December of 2020 provides some insight. Rallies attended by the Proud Boys generally involved a daytime march through the city streets in accordance with the official event permits issued to event organizers. However, the plan for the Jan 6 rally was slightly different. The plan for January 6th was directly related to the creation of the MOSD chapter as a new national chapter for organizing high-profile rallies in DC. The MOSD chapter was established as a reaction to the disastrous events of the previous MAGA rally in DC on December 12th, 2020, when four Proud Boys were stabbed (including Jeremy Bertino) following an altercation with a counter-protester. This debacle convinced Enrique Tarrio that many of the “rank and file” Proud Boys were much too undisciplined and aggressive, and prone to break formation during public marches in order to run off and attack random hecklers or counter-protesters on the sidelines. The new MOSD chapter was intended to address these issues by establishing a stricter command structure along with new rallying policies (e.g. splitting up into smaller squads and banning intoxication) intended to provide Proud Boy leaders with more control over the “rank and file” during marches. As Tarrio explained to the other MOSD leaders during the MOSD video conference: With this background context in mind, Enrique Tarrio's Telegram post quoted here in the left column provides our first clue as to the MOSD Proud Boys' actual plan for the Jan 6 rally. Tarrio stated that the MOSD Proud Boys would be “running a training exercise” on January 6th “throughout the day”, and in a later post Tarrio further stated that “we are going to be using the 6th as a test”. Moreover, during the MOSD video conference on December 30th, 2020, while elaborating on the new MOSD policy of splitting up into smaller 10-man squads, Enrique Tarrio summarized the plan for January 6th, saying “As of right now, the plans for the sixth is just to remain as a nucleus”: Later, during the MOSD video conference, Enrique Tarrio further clarified what he meant by “remain as a nucleus”, while again reiterating that the Jan 6 rally would be used as a “training exercise”: Thus, when we synthesize Enrique Tarrio's various stated objectives for January 6th, like remaining “as a nucleus” and staying “as one fucking unit”, with his other statements describing the agenda for January 6th “as a test” involving a “training exercise”, Tarrio's TRUE plan for January 6th becomes pretty clear. Enrique Tarrio wanted to use the January 6 rally to field test the MOSD chapter — to take it for a spin out in the streets of DC and test the new rallying policies and command structure to see if they worked as anticipated. This is also consistent with Charles Donohoe's description of the plan for Jan 6 as “a simple and quick mission”. The objective was to divide the attending MOSD Proud Boys into ten-man squads while maintaining a single overall marching formation (“stay as one fucking unit” and “remain as a nucleus”) throughout the march. The stricter MOSD command structure and rallying policies (e.g. banning intoxication) were intended to help leadership coordinate the ten-man squads while maintaining a single overall formation like a well-disciplined, professional infantry. Thus, the Proud Boys' actual plan for the Jan 6 rally was similar to the itineraries of previous rallies in the sense that it involved s daytime march through the streets. But the plan for Jan 6 was also somewhat different, as instead of the usual daytime march, the MOSD Proud Boys would conduct a “trial run” of the new MOSD command structure and rallying policies (e.g. splitting up into smaller squads) to determine if these new protocols enabled Proud Boy leaders to better control the “rank and file” while staying together “as one fucking unit” and maintaining formation during the march. Thus, Enrique Tarrio's true plan for Jan 6 was actually quite mundane and had absolutely nothing to do with any secret conspiracy to storm the Capitol. Finally, for the purpose of conducting the MOSD training exercises during the Jan 6 rally, Tarrio divided the attending Proud Boys into two groups. Group 1 included the Proud Boys specially selected to be part of the MOSD chapter, while Group 2 included all the regional Proud Boy chapters. It's worth noting that even though the members of Group 2 were mostly autonomous and separate from the MOSD chapter, Tarrio nonetheless ordered members of Group 2 attending the Jan 6 rally to “conduct themselves as gentlemen and always keep themselves in a self defense mindset”. This concern with how the Proud Boys are perceived in the eyes of the public is consistent with Enrique Tarrio's fear that if “one huge [public] incident happens” where the Proud Boys are “at fault” it could “bury the entire club”. That is, Enrique Tarrio feared that undisciplined behavior among the Proud Boys' ranks could eventually result in a PR disaster. This level-headed concern with public relations hardly seems appropriate for a man who was allegedly planning to attack police and storm the US Capitol building about a week later. The overall takeaway here is that a secret conspiracy to storm the Capitol building probably never existed, and the Proud Boys' actual plan for January 6th was much more mundane. |
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Indictment reads:
37. On December 29, 2020, TARRIO posted a message on social media that the Proud
Boys planned to “turn out in record numbers on Jan 6th but this time with a twist .... We will not
be wearing our traditional Black and Yellow. We will be incognito and we will be spread across
downtown DC in smaller teams. And who knows ... we might dress in all BLACK for the
occasion.” At different times, NORDEAN, BIGGS, REHL, and Donohoe reiterated that Proud
Boys members should avoid wearing Proud Boys colors on January 6, 2021.
Full context from Parler:
|
This Parler post was extremely important to the prosecution's seditious conspiracy case. In a public announcement on Parler,
Enrique Tarrio informed his thousands of followers that the Proud Boys will
not be wearing their traditional
black and yellow uniforms on January 6, and will instead show up incognito (in plain clothes). Tarrio also suggests that some or
all of the Proud Boys that show up in D.C. on January 6 will be dressed in all black.
Firstly, Enrique Tarrio's statement that the Proud Boys will "spread across downtown DC in smaller teams" is already mostly incompatible with the prosecution's seditious conspiracy case, because it's not really clear why spreading out in small teams "across downtown DC" makes any sense if the goal is to attack the Capitol building. The indictment glosses over this, focusing on the fact that the Proud Boys dressed incognito on Jan 6 instead of "wearing Proud Boys colors that had been prominently displayed at previous events." Jan 6 was not the first time the Proud Boys considered showing up to an event without wearing the traditional black and yellow Proud Boy club colors. For example, back in September, 2020, before Trump even lost the election (and thus before the Proud Boys would have had any motive to storm the Capitol), one Proud Boy, concerned about increased public scrutiny after the Proud Boys were name-dropped on national television, commented in a Telegram chat for Proud Boy chapter presidents: And in November of 2020, Enrique Tarrio forbade the Proud Boys from wearing their usual club colors on multiple occasions (see Govt Exhibits 514-12 and 514-15), and ordered Jeremy Bertino to "make sure...no colors" (Govt Exhibit 530-2) when attending a rally in North Carolina. Then in December, before attending the “Million MAGA March” rally in DC, Enrique Tarrio posted on Telegram (see Government Exhibit 548-2), emphatically ordering the Proud Boys to NOT wear colors on the Friday before the main event: Clearly, the Proud Boys occasionally had reasons to avoid wearing their usual club colors, even when not involved in any seditious conspiracies to storm Capitol buildings. Yet throughout the trial, the prosecution maintained that the Proud Boys dressed incognito on January 6th expressly because they planned to storm the Capitol building and wanted to avoid being easily identified. The prosecution lumped the "no colors" policy together with other preparations made by the Proud Boys in advance of Jan 6, including the fact that the Proud Boys came to D.C. with protective gear (body armor) and walkie-talkies, arguing that all of these preparations were part of a pre-planned conspiracy to attack the Capitol. (See paragraph 28 of the indictment.) A Sentencing Memorandum submitted by the prosecution reads:
Sentencing memorandum reads:
The seditious conspiracy began at least as early as December 19, 2020.
Tarrio, Nordean, Biggs, Rehl, and other leaders of the Proud Boys organization intentionally
recruited men prepared to engage in physical violence, if necessary. They organized a return to
Washington, D.C., which guidance included what to wear (e.g., no colors), what to bring (e.g.,
protective gear and communication equipment), and what to do (e.g., fit in or fuck off).
This is one of the least defensible claims made by the prosecution. Firstly, the Proud Boys regularly wore protective gear at many rallies they attended over the years, and Jan 6 was no different. Secondly, there is overwhelming evidence that preparations made by the Proud Boys for Jan 6 (including bringing protective gear and not wearing colors) was in anticipation of violent conflict with Antifa, the Proud Boys' long-time street rivals at political rallies and protests. The term "Antifa" is an umbrella term referring to various regional anti-fascist or anarchist collectives (labeled “Anarchist Violent Extremists” by the FBI), known to disrupt or counter-protest events they consider fascist, such as pro-Trump rallies or protests. Organized anti-fascist groups wearing “Black Bloc” showed up at various Black Lives Matter protests throughout 2020. The Proud Boys have a long history of violent conflict with Antifa, going back to 2017 at least. The Proud Boys also clashed with Antifa on the streets of DC after dark during previous MAGA rallies held on November 14th and December 12th of 2020, so the Proud Boys had every reason to expect another fight with Antifa in DC on January 6, 2021. Indeed, US Capitol Police intelligence, the US Secret Service, and the US Park Police all predicted that violent street fighting would break out after dark between the Proud Boys and local Antifa or other counter-protester groups on January 6th, just like it did at previous DC rallies. In Enrique Tarrio's Parler post, his emphasis on the word "black", as in "we might dress in all BLACK" and "[t]he night calls for a BLACK tie event", is a clear reference to the “black bloc” style clothing typically worn by anti-fascist groups at protest events. Other Proud Boys, including Joe Biggs, also posted on Parler to reiterate what Tarrio said about dressing incognito on January 6th. These other posts leave little doubt that the decision to not wear colors on Jan 6 was directly related to the Proud Boys' ongoing feud with Antifa:
Joe Biggs [on Parler]:
Attn: DC ANTIFA. We will not be attending DC in colors. We will be blending in as one of you. You won't see us. You'll
even think we are you. We are going to smell like you. Move like you and look like you. The only thing we will do that's
us! Is think like us! Jan 6th is gonna be epic. Can't wait to walk around with you all. 😉
Bill Whicker III (@vigocarpathian) [on Parler]:
DC loves Proud Boys. Proud Boys won't be in DC on the 6th this time in colors, but will we be there as normies? Maybe a few?
Maybe a thousand? Antifa will never know. They better think twice about attacking anyone this time. We are everywhere! Or are we?
The mischievous, mocking tone of these Parler posts is consistent with the interpretation that Enrique Tarrio and the other Proud Boys posted this information publicly on Parler to confuse or intimidate Antifa, perhaps with the goal of ultimately being able to infiltrate or ambush Antifa. This interpretation is consistent with the fact that Enrique Tarrio's post ends with a cryptic remark, omitted in the indictment: "48 Laws of Power #3 #4 #14 #15 #17 #29 #37 #39 #48". This is a clear reference to the rules enumerated in Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power, including Rule #3: conceal your intentions, Rule #14: pose as a friend, work as a spy, and Rule #17: keep others in suspended terror - cultivate an air of unpredictability. This interpretation is confirmed by the December 30th, 2020 MOSD video conference (see full transcript), where Enrique Tarrio explained that the purpose of publicly announcing the "no colors" policy was to conceal the number of Proud Boys in D.C. on Jan 6, since Tarrio expected a significantly smaller number of Proud Boys (in comparison with previous D.C. rallies) to attend. This is consistent with Proud Boy Bill Whicker III's Parler post, where he coyly says "Maybe a few? Maybe a thousand? Antifa will never know. They better think twice about attacking anyone this time. We are everywhere! Or are we?" And it's also consistent with another statement from Tarrio on Telegram (see Govt Exhibit 514-47) where he explains that one purpose of the "no colors" announcement on Parler was to cultivate fear among Antifa. And it's further corroborated by a statement from Joe Biggs in the MOSD Leaders Telegram group chat (see Govt Exhibit 501-12), where he asks the other Proud Boys to avoid posting anything on social media prior to Jan 6 that would "give away locations or our numbers". All of this strongly suggests that the "no colors" policy was meant to enable the Proud Boys to avoid being recognized by Antifa on Jan 6. This is the most natural, straightforward interpretation of the relevant Parler posts. Indeed, after Enrique Tarrio announced the "no colors" policy on Parler, Business Insider published an article about the Proud Boys that simply took it for granted that the purpose of showing up "incognito" on Jan 6 was to blend in with Antifa, since this is the most natural interpretation. On top of all this, several posts from the private MOSD Ops Telegram chat group make it indisputably clear that the purpose of the "no colors"/incognito policy was to avoid being recognized by Antifa. In this chat, the Proud Boys were discussing dressing up in all black like Antifa. Some Proud Boys even posted pictures on Telegram showing off their attempts to dress like Antifa by donning all-black attire and protective gear. Both Joe Biggs and Enrique Tarrio commented that blending in with Antifa convincingly would require certain Proud Boys to hide their beards, because (according to Biggs and Tarrio) Antifa members typically do not have beards: These Telegram posts amount to indisputable, “smoking-gun” level evidence that the Proud Boys' purpose in showing up incognito in D.C. on Jan 6 was to try to blend in with Antifa. However, despite all this, the prosecution stubbornly maintained the position that the Proud Boys did not wear their normal colors on Jan 6 because they were planning to attack the police and storm the Capitol. 
A MOSD Proud Boy shows off his attempt to look like Antifa
Finally, there are numerous discussions across multiple Telegram chat groups where the Proud Boys talk about personal protective equipment and body armor. Very often they mention a need for stab proof vests or stab proof body armor. Examples include the following Telegram posts from the MOSD Leaders group chat (see Government Exhibits 501-4, 501-25, and 501-45): Clearly, the Proud Boys were very interested in acquiring stab proof vests because of "recent events" at the previous D.C. rally in December, when multiple Proud Boys were stabbed following an altercation with a counter-protester in the street. During the conspiracy trial, the prosecution claimed that the Proud Boys brought equipment and body armor to DC on Jan 6 in preparation for attacking the police and storming the Capitol. But a stab proof vest is useless against the police, who, unlike Antifa, generally do not use knives. 
Weapons recovered from a Black Bloc
protester arrested in Portland
Thus, it's clear that Enrique Tarrio didn't mind if the police knew that the Proud Boys would be relatively "under-staffed" on Jan 6. In contrast, Enrique Tarrio and other Proud Boys posted false information publicly on social media in order to mislead Antifa into believing the Proud Boys would “turn out in record numbers” in DC on January 6th. This is yet further evidence that the "no colors" policy was mostly to avoid detection from Antifa. |
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Indictment reads:
38. On December 29, 2020, TARRIO posted a message to the MOSD Prospect Group to notify prospective members of a virtual meeting on December 30 to
explain "how this all works."
TARRIO advised the group that the MOSD "will have a top down structure" and advised prospects that, "if that's something you're not comfortable with"
they should not bother attending the live session. TARRIO advised that "upper tier leadership" would consist of a three-person "Operations" section
led by REHL, PERSON-3 and one other person. TARRIO advised that the "Marketing" section would be led by TARRIO, BIGGS and NORDEAN. TARRIO advised that
"second tier" leadership would consist of eight regional members.
Full context from
MOSD MAIN Telegram group:
See also the MOSD video conference Video from 12/30/2020 (see full transcript):
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Included in the indictment to once again emphasize the "top down structure" and rigid, strict nature of the MOSD chapter, suggesting to the reader
that the MOSD chapter was a militaristic organization created for the express purpose of storming the Capitol building. Additionally, this paragraph
suggests that the MOSD chapter involved a sophisticated level of planning, with references to a multi-tier leadership structure
with "Operations" and "Marketing" divisions. This shows evidence of planning, but does not show WHAT the Proud Boys were
planning for Jan 6, again relying on confirmation bias to kick in and mislead the reader to interpret any evidence of planning as evidence of a
seditious conspiracy to storm the Capitol.
The indictment also omits certain exculpatory parts of Tarrio's post, such as when he said "we are going to be using the 6th as a test". This statement doesn't easily fit with the prosecution's seditious conspiracy case, but it is entirely consistent with Enrique Tarrio's actual plan for January 6th. More significantly, the indictment brings up the "virtual meeting on December 30". This video conference — hereinafter referred to as the MOSD video conference — lasted over an hour and a half and is available on video in its entirety. (See also the full transcript). This video stands out as very significant exculpatory evidence. The MOSD video conference was held about a week before January 6th, yet throughout the entire hour and a half long discussion between upper-tier MOSD leaders, including the "big 3" (Enrique Tarrio, Joe Biggs and Ethan Nordean), there was not a single mention of any plan to storm the Capitol or anything remotely similar. The meeting clarifies the real purpose of the MOSD chapter, which was to address major disciplinary and organizational problems experienced during the previous DC rally on December 12, 2020, when four Proud Boys were stabbed, including Jeremy Bertino. Enrique Tarrio blamed this disaster on a breakdown of discipline and a failure to follow orders among the “rank-and-file” Proud Boys who attended the December 12th rally. Enrique Tarrio blamed that disaster on a breakdown of discipline and a failure to follow orders among the “rank-and-file” Proud Boys who often broke formation to run off and attack random counter-protesters or hecklers on the sidelines. Tarrio feared that such disciplinary problems would ultimately result in a major PR disaster that could “bury the entire club if one huge incident happens”. During the MOSD video conference the Proud Boys discussed establishing new rallying policies (like splitting up into smaller squads) to make it easier to stay in formation while marching through the streets during rallies. The meeting also contains extremely compelling, exculpatory statements, including a number of statements from Enrique Tarrio making it absolutely clear that the Proud Boys were ordered to refrain from instigating any violence and to act defensively at all times: Ultimately, the MOSD video conference video suggests that the Proud Boys' real plan for Jan 6 was simply to field test the new MOSD command structure — to take the MOSD chapter out for a spin in the streets of DC in a march and see if it works as anticipated. This is also consistent with Charles Donohoe's description of the plan for Jan 6 as “a simple and quick mission”, and also matches what the Proud Boys were observed actually doing on the morning of January 6th before the Capitol riot began. The objective was to conduct a march while staying together in formation and observing the new rallying protocols established by the MOSD leadership, such as splitting into smaller 10 man squads (timestamp 16:59), not wearing the usual Proud Boy colors (timestamp 1:01:09), not getting drunk or high during the rally (timestamp 4:40), and acting defensively at all times (timestamps 7:53, 32:03, 33:29). This is also consistent with Tarrio's post on Telegram in MOSD MAIN saying that "we are going to be using the 6th as a test". It's clear that at the time of the December 30th video conference, Enrique Tarrio hadn't yet fully worked out an exact itinerary for Jan 6, but he made it clear that the plan would involve testing out the new protocols and attending the official events scheduled for Jan 6. Event organizers had obtained permits to hold various rallies and demonstrations on January 6th, featuring celebrity conservative speakers, to be held on stages near the Capitol building. Most of these events were organized by pro-Trump organizations associated with the “Stop the Steal” movement, including “Latinos for Trump”, of which Enrique Tarrio was Florida state director. Thus, Enrique Tarrio said the MOSD Proud Boys would be attending some of the official events on Wednesday, January 6th, and that “the first event starts at 10 AM, uh, by the Capitol”. This is consistent with official event flyers from Latinos For Trump and the official Latinos For Trump website, along with various official rally guides for January 6th:
Early flyer promoting some of the official events planned for Jan 6 (see full guide).
Enrique Tarrio was likely booked as a guest speaker at the Latinos for Trump event at 10 AM-12 PM Additionally, the Proud Boys sometimes worked security details at protest events, providing security for high profile conservatives or ordinary Trump supporters attending MAGA events. Discussions during the MOSD video conference confirm that some Proud Boys planned to work as security detail on Jan 6 at the Latinos for Trump event: It's also very likely that Enrique Tarrio himself was scheduled to give a speech on January 6th at the “Latinos for Trump” event stage located at “Area 7” (300 First Street NE) by the Capitol between 10 AM and 12 PM. (See Government Exhibit 501-56 showing Zach Rehl's post in the MOSD Leaders group chat, the Parler post from Loomer, and the trial testimony of George Mesa and Jeremy Bertino.) Therefore, the weight of the evidence strongly indicates that no secret plan to storm the Capitol ever existed, and that the Proud Boys' real plan for January 6th was much more mundane, involving test marches and attending demonstrations. |
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Indictment reads:
39. On December 29, 2020, PEZZOLA sent a direct message to TARRIO on an
encrypted messaging system: “Hey boss, [I’m] one of the guys bringing the [decorative] shield
down... I'll be in dc w a few other brothers from NY.”
Full context from Telegram chat between Tarrio and Pezzola (Government Exhibit 521-1):
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According to the prosecution, Dominic Pezzola, a Proud Boy from New York, was one of the first rioters to actually breach the Capitol
building when he smashed a window with a riot shield (unrelated to the "decorative shield" mentioned in the indictment) that he had
stolen from a police officer, enabling the first members of the mob of rioters to enter the building.
Indictment reads:
Dominic Pezzola's defense admitted that Pezzola smashed the window,
but
denied that Pezzola was the first person to actually breach the Capitol building and also denied that the first members of the mob
entered through a breach created by Pezzola. The defense claimed that an unidentified individual wearing a red cap,
glasses and a red sweater first smashed through the window, and that the first rioters entered through the breach
created by this unidentified rioter in red.
At approximately 2:13 p.m., PEZZOLA used the riot shield he had taken from a
Capitol Police officer to break a window of the Capitol. The first members of the mob entered the
Capitol through this broken window.
At face value, the prosecution's claim here about Dominic Pezzola has little relevance to the seditious conspiracy charges, because it has nothing to do with advance planning. However, the prosecution believed that their conspiracy case was bolstered by the fact that some Proud Boys were among the first wave of rioters to breach the Capitol, with Pezzola being among the first. While it's true that Pezzola was among the first wave of rioters, the prosecution's description of Pezzola's actions was somewhat misleading, if not factually incorrect. The defense claimed that Pezzola was NOT the first rioter to breach the Capitol, and that the first members of the mob did not enter the Capitol building through a breach created by Dominic Pezzola, instead claiming that an unidentified rioter in red was the first person to breach the Capitol and let in the mob. The defense's claim is corroborated by video of the incident, but the prosecution was not entirely wrong either, thanks to some clever wording in the indictment. In the video, we can see that the window in question is still undamaged at timestamp 0:08. The window disappears from view after that, as the camera pans over to the left. Then at timestamp 0:16, the camera pans back to the window, and we see that the right window pane has been cracked. Then at timestamp 0:20, someone dressed in red, wearing a red cap and a white surgical face mask, smashes through the right window pane by hurling a thin board of wood like a spear. Finally, Dominic Pezzola comes along and smashes the left window pane using a riot shield around 20 seconds later at 0:40.     To be fair to the prosecution, the unidentified rioter in red smashed through the right window pane first, but didn't completely clear away all the glass. Dominic Pezzola then came along and smashed through the left window pane using a riot shield, completely clearing away all the glass. Then the unidentified rioter in red cleared away the remaining glass from the right pane at 0:51. So perhaps the question of who first "breached" the Capitol building is open to interpretation. The unidentified rioter in red smashed through the right window pane before Dominic Pezzola arrived. But Dominic Pezzola was the first rioter to clear enough glass from the window pane to enable people to climb through. However, the first person to actually enter the Capitol building climbed through the right window pane at 0:57. The right pane was smashed and cleared by the unidentified rioter in red, not Pezzola. Regardless, Pezzola's direct message to Enrique Tarrio is included in the indictment most likely to suggest a close relationship between Tarrio and Pezzola. Dominic Pezzola (“Spazzo - 2nd°” on Telegram) was a rank-and-file Proud Boy rather than a leader with any authority or decision making power within the MOSD chapter. Pezzola clearly had never even met Tarrio at the time this message was sent on December 29, 2020, merely a week before January 6. Pezzola was rather late to the party, having become a Proud Boy less than two months before Jan 6 (see trial testimony of Lisa Magee), and joining the MOSD MAIN Telegram chat group as late as January 2, only 4 days before Jan 6 (see Government Exhibit 507-7). Thus, the connection between Tarrio and Pezzola, and by extension Pezzola's involvement in the alleged conspiracy, was somewhat tenuous. But since Pezzola happened to be one of the first rioters to breach the Capitol building, the prosecution wanted to strengthen the connection between Pezzola's action and Tarrio's planning. The inclusion of this Telegram post in the indictment is meant to strengthen the link between Pezzola and Tarrio, suggesting to the reader that when Pezzola smashed the window and breached the Capitol, he was carrying out Tarrio's plans. Pezzola was ultimately the only Proud Boy acquitted of the seditious conspiracy charge. |
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Indictment reads:
41. Between December 30 and December 31, 2020, TARRIO communicated multiple
times with an individual whose identity is known to the grand jury. On December 30,2020, this
individual sent TARRIO a nine-page document titled, “1776 Returns.” The document set forth a
plan to occupy a few “crucial buildings” in Washington, D.C., on January 6, including House and
Senate office buildings around the Capitol, with as “many people as possible” to “show our
politicians We the People are in charge.” After sending the document, the individual stated, “The
revolution is important than anything.” TARRIO responded, “That's what every waking moment
consists of ... I'm not playing games.”
Full context from Telegram chat between Enrique Tarrio and Eryka Gemma (Government Exhibit 528-1):
Eryka Gemma (Eryka ✈ BYO฿ank):
Full context from texts between Enrique Tarrio and Eryka Gemma (Government Exhibit 523-1):
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Included in the indictment because it demonstrates that Enrique Tarrio was sent the
“1776 Returns” document
on December 30, 2020, as an attachment on Telegram. 1776 Returns constitutes one of the
strangest, most interesting components of the prosecution's
seditious conspiracy case. At first glance, this 9-page document seems to be a veritable smoking gun for
the prosecution. 1776 Returns describes a detailed
plan to occupy multiple government buildings on Capitol Hill during the rally on January 6, 2021, and
demand a new election
without mail-in ballots.
The indictment includes excerpts from a text message conversation between Enrique Tarrio and a woman named Eryka Gemma (a.k.a. Eryka Flores) — the individual who initially sent the 1776 Returns document to Enrique Tarrio. Eryka Gemma (@BankOfEryka on social media and YouTube) is a Bitcoin activist and the young CEO of the Miami Blockchain Center. At some point in October of 2020 or earlier, she met Enrique Tarrio who promoted her social media accounts on Parler and became a part of her social circle. Tarrio and Gemma likely became involved romantically to some extent, and Gemma regularly supported Tarrio and the Proud Boys on social media. In November of 2020, Eryka Gemma expressed despair over Trump's election loss. She believed the election was stolen and supported the “Stop the Steal” movement, and even accompanied the Proud Boys to a MAGA rally in Washington DC in December of 2020. In the text message conversation quoted in the indictment, Eryka Gemma seems to have been pressuring Enrique Tarrio to execute the plan described in 1776 Returns (the “revolution”), and Tarrio, using somewhat nebulous language, ostensibly affirmed his commitment to carrying out “the revolution”. 
Eryka Gemma — a cryptocurrency activist from Miami who sent Enrique Tarrio the mysterious
“1776 Returns” document — gives an interview
while mingling with the Proud Boys during the “Million MAGA March” rally
in December of 2020.
The text message conversation between Enrique Tarrio and Eryka Gemma is not entirely clear, and there is almost certainly some missing context. The part of their conversation made publicly available through Government Exhibit 523-1 (quoted in the left column) is almost certainly a snippet of a larger conversation. Eryka Gemma reminds Tarrio that “the revolution” (presumably meaning the plan described in 1776 Returns) is more “important than anything”. She appears to be frustrated with Tarrio for some reason, perhaps perceiving him to be non-committal in some way to the plan she proposed. Tarrio responds with “That’s what every waking moment consists of”, which a reasonable person can interpret as an expression of assent or commitment. A journalist with Politico interpreted Tarrio's statement to mean that Tarrio was so fully committed to Eryka Gemma's plan that he spent “every waking moment” thinking about revolution and storming the Capitol. But Tarrio's statement is somewhat cryptic and isn't necessarily an expression of commitment or support because Eryka Gemma's next message suggested dissatisfaction with his response. She said “WellC If you don’t like my plan, let me know. I will pitch elsewhere”, suggesting she interpreted Tarrio's response as something less than a firm commitment. She gives Tarrio an ultimatum and then adds “If not, stop playing games with me”. Tarrio replies “...I’m not playing games.” Both the indictment and the J6 report misleadingly omit all but one of Eryka Gemma's text messages, making it appear as if Tarrio said “I’m not playing games” as an expression of firm committment in response to Eryka Gemma's statement about the importance of “the revolution”, when in fact Tarrio was responding specifically to Eryka Gemma's message accusing him of “playing games”. Moreover, Eryka Gemma's apparent snarkiness suggests an alternate interpretation of Tarrio's text messages. Perhaps when Tarrio said “That’s what every waking moment consists of”, he was actually expressing a more passive aggressive sentiment along the lines of “This again? This revolution is all you ever talk about”. That interpretation better fits Eryka Gemma's immediate response and her overall attitude, and it makes the entire conversation more logical and coherent. This alternate interpretation is also consistent with information revealed during the trial regarding some of the omitted text messages surrounding the publicly available snippet (Govt Exhibit 523-1) of Tarrio's conversation with Eryka Gemma. While cross-examining FBI Agent Nicole Miller during the trial, Tarrio's defense attorney characterized the missing text messages as follows: “Eryka was hounding [Tarrio] nonstop, telling him that she was the pinnacle of female attractiveness, intelligence, female submission, and [Tarrio] was blowing her off”. FBI Agent Nicole Miller did not explicitly confirm that this characterization was accurate, but she did not dispute it. The characterization is at least consistent with Eryka's apparent frustration evident in the excerpt available to us. Regardless, the prosecution framed 1776 Returns as a highly incriminating piece of evidence supporting their seditious conspiracy case and demonstrating that Enrique Tarrio, who was not present in Washington DC on January 6, nonetheless planned and orchestrated the Jan 6 storming of the US Capitol building using 1776 Returns as a playbook. However, a closer examination of the 1776 Returns document immediately calls this entire premise into question. The most obvious problem is that the plan described in 1776 Returns bears very little resemblance to what actually happened on January 6, 2021. In fact, the plan in 1776 Returns does not even involve the US Capitol building at all. Rather, 1776 Returns calls for multiple groups of 50 or more people to simultaneously occupy at least 8 different buildings, including Senate and House office buildings, the Supreme Court and the CNN building (but not the Capitol building itself), in order to demand a new election without mail-in ballots while remaining inside the occupied buildings for an extended 1960s-style “sit-in” until the demand is met. The plan calls for individual "covert sleepers", dressed in business suits, to infiltrate each building in advance by booking fake appointments in order to let other protesters inside. The plan also suggests pulling fire alarms at locations throughout DC (including museums, hotels, and Walmart) to distract the police. Manpower for the operation is to be recruited by a special team of recruiters tasked with handing out copies of the 1776 Returns plan on the streets of DC. 
Moreover, the actual Jan 6 Capitol riot involved kinetic violence, as rioters threw their bodies and makeshift projectiles at police defensive lines, whereas the plan described in 1776 Returns is entirely non-violent and has more in common with a Civil Rights era “sit-in” than the pepper-spray fueled chaotic melee that actually happened on January 6. 1776 Returns presents a more intricate and detailed plan, involving specialized roles, “covert sleepers”, coordinated diversions, and multiple teams simultaneously occupying 8 separate buildings (not including the US Capitol building). But the actual riot that happened on January 6 involved a large mob of Trump supporters traveling from the Ellipse towards the Capitol building in dribs and drabs, accumulating by the Capitol's West Front where the mob began a blunt, full-frontal assault on police defensive lines, breaching barricades and smashing through windows, before entering the building and splintering into groups that meandered about inside with little cohesive action and no coherent political objective. No demands were ever formally issued, no extended “sit-in” was attempted, and there were no “covert sleepers” or recruiters handing out copies of the plan on the streets of DC. Pretty much nothing described in 1776 Returns actually happened on January 6, 2021. Moreover, throughout all the MOSD Telegram evidence and the MOSD video conference, there are zero references to the plan described in 1776 Returns. There is scant evidence that any Proud Boy apart from Enrique Tarrio even knew the document existed. Furthermore, there is an unedited one hour and 40 minute livestream documenting the actions of the Proud Boys under the command of Ethan Nordean on the morning of January 6 before the riot. Yet throughout this livestream, we never see any Proud Boys doing anything described in 1776 Returns. We never see anyone handing out copies of the plan or attempting to distract police by pulling fire alarms. We never see any “covert sleepers” wearing suits while infiltrating Senate office buildings. We never even hear the Proud Boys use any of the suggested chants listed in 1776 Returns, such as “Liberty or Death!” or “No Trump, No America!”. Instead, the livestream consists mostly of the Proud Boys marching around Washington DC chanting “Fuck Antifa!” before stopping to eat lunch by the food trucks on Constitution Avenue. If we accept the prosecution's argument that the Proud Boys used 1776 Returns as a playbook for January 6, then we must also conclude that the Proud Boys completely failed to actually execute anything described in 1776 Returns, and instead ended up coincidentally participating in a completely unrelated riot driven by a mob of Trump supporters who bluntly attacked the Capitol building head-on. Indeed, the plan described in 1776 Returns is totally incompatible with the prosecution's own seditious conspiracy case. The prosecution argued that the Proud Boys devised a plan to rile up a crowd of “normie” Trump supporters and harness them as a battering ram to breach police defensive lines and storm the Capitol building. But this plan is nothing like the non-violent, coordinated “sit-ins” described in 1776 Returns. We know that on December 30, 2020, Eryka Gemma sent the 1776 Returns document to Enrique Tarrio. Yet nothing described in 1776 Returns actually happened on January 6. How do we explain this? Our options are somewhat limited. Either:
The weight of the Telegram and video evidence strongly supports Option 3. On multiple occasions, Enrique Tarrio indicated that the primary objective for January 6 was to field test the new rallying policies established under the Ministry of Self Defense (MOSD) chapter. Tarrio stated that the MOSD Proud Boys would be running a “training exercise” during “the 5th at night and 6th throughout the day” and that “we are going to be using the 6th as a test [of the new MOSD policies]” (see Govt Exhibit 503-18). This is consistent with the stated purpose of the MOSD chapter, which was established specifically to curtail aggressive behavior (Govt Exhibit 500-69) from rank-and-file Proud Boys at national rallies, and to make it easier to control and direct “rank and file” Proud Boys while maintaining formation during marches. (See the above sections on the purpose of the MOSD chapter and the Proud Boys' true plan for Jan 6 for a more exhaustive review of this evidence.) Regardless of which option we pick, 1776 Returns amounts to a mere distraction or “red herring”, because nothing described in this document actually happened on January 6. Thus, 1776 Returns provided very little utility to the prosecution apart from a vague suggestion that the document may have influenced the Proud Boys in some unspecified way to devise a completely different plan to storm a completely different building using completely different tactics on January 6. Furthermore, the plan described in 1776 Returns is not necessarily unique. The idea of storming or occupying buildings was a prevalent feature of the zeitgeist surrounding the “Stop the Steal” MAGA movement in late 2020, with over 3,900 Parler posts (including echoes) that encourage the storming or occupying of government/administrative buildings appearing between November 2020 and January 5, 2021. One Parler post from a user named @Isleofkent2141 that encourages Trump supporters to enter federal buildings on January 6 has some interesting similarities to 1776 Returns and mentions many of the same target buildings. Thus, any broad similarities between the plan described in 1776 Returns and the actual events that happened on January 6 cannot even be reliably attributed to the influence of 1776 Returns. The document is therefore mostly irrelevant to the seditious conspiracy case, because it had no observable effect on the events of January 6 (apart from teaching Enrique Tarrio a little Russian history), and any indirect influence it may have exerted is entirely within the realm of conjecture. While the 1776 Returns document ultimately amounts to a distraction, its mysterious origin nonetheless makes it an object of interest and curiosity. Where did this document come from and who wrote it? The document is peppered with verbiage drawn from the American Revolution like “We The People”. But the document also prominently features the phrase “The Winter Palace”, clearly inspired by the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, making it a major linguistic outlier among online right-wing discourse. The language used on social media within the online MAGA-sphere often draws from the patriotic ethos of the American Revolution, but rarely from Vladimir Lenin and his left-wing revolutionaries. In fact, there are only four Parler posts containing the phrase “Winter Palace” (out of over 98 million posts contained in the Zenodo Parler Database). The fact that Enrique Tarrio used the phrase “Winter Palace” (see Govt Exhibit 530-5) on Telegram on the evening of January 6 indicates that Enrique Tarrio almost certainly at least read 1776 Returns at some point. But he certainly didn't write this mysterious document, since we know that Eryka Gemma sent it to him on December 30, 2020. Enrique Tarrio Googled the phrase “the winter palace” on January 1, 2021, indicating he probably read 1776 Returns but wasn't familiar with the historical significance of the Winter Palace. Eryka Gemma implied she was the author of 1776 Returns when she said to Enrique Tarrio “WellC If you don’t like my plan...”. The mysterious document also ends with a “Special Mention” section that praises Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Senator Rand Paul. Eryka Gemma is a resident of Florida and she campaigned for Ron Paul (the father of Rand Paul) in 2012. Furthermore, Eryka Gemma used the word “revolutionary” while being interviewed in mid-December of 2020, well before she sent Tarrio the 1776 Returns document. And in a now deleted tweet from January 7, 2021, Eryka Gemma wrote “The Russian revolution only occurred because they stormed in the winter capitol.” Finally, according to the trial testimony of FBI Agent Nicole Miller, the document was created by Eryka Gemma. Regardless, it's very likely that Eryka Gemma was not the sole author. During the trial, the defense filed a motion complaining that the prosecution misleadingly implied to the jury that Enrique Tarrio was the author of the mysterious 1776 Returns document. The defense cited a Politico article claiming that some of the content found in 1776 Returns was lifted from an earlier document (now lost to history) written by some guy named Samuel Armes, founder of a non-profit cryptocurrency lobbying organization called the “Florida Blockchain Business Association”. According to testimony from Samuel Armes for the January 6 Committee, he met Eryka Gemma in a Bitcoin Miami chat group on WhatsApp, and she later became a board member for his organization. Samuel Armes told the J6 Committee that some of the language and images contained in 1776 Returns were lifted from a private document he authored that explored hypothetical scenarios that might occur during the political chaos that could potentially ensue if President Trump refused to concede the 2020 election. When Samuel Armes was an undergrad at the University of South Florida, he participated in a research project for the United States Special Operations Command which involved “wargaming” scenarios exploring how criminals or terrorists might use cryptocurrency. Samuel Armes claimed that this experience, along with the release of the Transition Integrity Project report in August of 2020, inspired him to take a personal interest in sketching out possible scenarios that might occur if President Trump refused to concede. Armes wrote about a scenario where generic radical groups (either right-wing or left-wing) cause chaos and hold sit-ins in various government buildings around Capitol Hill. However, Samuel Armes denied writing any part of 1776 Returns that was ostensibly right-wing or pro-Trump, including the title “1776 Returns”. He also denied using the phrase “Winter Palace”, and claimed to have only a vague understanding of what that phrase even signifies. Finally, Samuel Armes told the J6 Committee that he casually discussed these “wargaming” scenarios while socializing with Eryka Gemma some time in or after August of 2020. According to Armes, Eryka Gemma showed interest in his ideas and asked him to email her the document, so he did. While there is still quite a bit of uncertainty surrounding the origins of 1776 Returns, the most likely scenario is that Samuel Armes' testimony is at least partially true, meaning he authored an initial draft of the document and emailed it to Eryka Gemma, who (perhaps in collaboration with others) repurposed it into a 9 page tactical brief. Eryka Gemma then sent it to Enrique Tarrio on December 30, 2020, hoping he would use it as a playbook for January 6. Tarrio likely read it on January 1, 2021, then Googled “the winter palace”, and then pretty much forgot about 1776 Returns or perhaps put it on the back burner. |
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Indictment reads:
42. On December 30, 2020, TARRIO convened a video call for prospective members
of the MOSD. TARRIO, Donohoe, and others in MOSD leadership emphasized that members of
the MOSD were to follow the commands of leadership. Once again, TARRIO and others in MOSD
leadership advised prospective members that they could “fit in or fuck off.” REHL warned
prospective members that January 6 was going to be a “completely different operation” and that
the Proud Boys would not be conducting a “night march and flexing our [arms] and shit.”
Full context from MOSD video conference (see transcript):
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Included in the indictment to again emphasize the strict, militaristic nature of the MOSD chapter,
suggesting to the reader that the MOSD chapter was created expressly to storm the US Capitol. Again, as with
paragraph 33 of the indictment, the indictment exaggerates the rigid nature of the MOSD chapter.
But watching the December 30, 2020 video conference
or reading the transcript reveals that the MOSD chapter wasn't
necessarily always so rigid:
Next, in one of the most misleading sections yet, the indictment pulls two fragments from Zach Rehl's long-winded, rambling speech to the MOSD leadership during the December 30, 2020 MOSD video conference at timestamp 1:33:24 (see transcript). The quoted fragments are an attempt to mislead the reader into believing that Zach Rehl called Jan 6 a "completely different operation" because it was an operation that involved storming the Capitol. But when read (or watched) in full, Zach Rehl's rambling speech more or less summarizes the purpose of the MOSD chapter, which was to implement new rules and protocols that address organizational and disciplinary issues that arose during the previous MAGA rally in December. These new protocols included splitting into smaller 10 man squads (timestamp 16:59), not wearing identifying colors (timestamp 1:01:09), not getting drunk or high during the rally (timestamp 4:40), and always acting defensively instead of offensively (timestamps 7:53, 32:03, 33:29). These protocols were also meant to mitigate the difficulty of marching hundreds of people while maintaining formation, which was a major source of frustration for Enrique Tarrio at the previous rally in December. Tarrio compared it to herding cats (see Government Exhibit 514-34), because individual Proud Boys often lacked discipline while marching and broke formation after being provoked: Once again, the entire 1 hour and 38 minute MOSD video conference is strong exculpatory evidence. The Proud Boys talk for over an hour and a half, discussing the purpose of the MOSD chapter along with new rallying strategies and safety measures, but never once is there any mention of storming the Capitol or anything remotely similar. Rather, the MOSD chapter was created to enforce structure and discipline during all future national rallies (including Jan 6), with the goal of making it easier to control and direct large numbers of Proud Boys on the ground: All of this is consistent with private discussions the Proud Boys had amongst themselves on Telegram on December 30, 2020, the same day as the MOSD video conference. For example, the following exchange in MOSD MAIN between Johnny Blackbeard and another Proud Boy again confirms that the purpose of the MOSD was to crack down on undisciplined, aggressive behavior from the rank-and-file Proud Boys during marches: As the MOSD video conference was coming to an end, Zach Rehl said he wanted to "make this DC event a little bit more successful" (timestamp 1:35:02). But what does the prosecution think this even means? Does it mean that Zach Rehl thinks storming the Capitol will "make this DC event a little bit more successful"? Zach Rehl's rambling speech essentially just summarizes the goal of the MOSD chapter, which was to improve the way the Proud Boys conduct rallies. Rehl suggested this would be an iterative process that would involve some mistakes, but over time, and after multiple future rallies, the Proud Boys would eventually get it right. Nothing Zach Rehl says here suggests any seditious plans to storm the Capitol: Again, it's fairly obvious this entire hour and a half long video conference was about improving future Proud Boy rallies (“a way to do rallies better”) by establishing a stricter command structure and implementing new rallying policies via the new MOSD chapter, and that Jan 6 was to be used “as a training exercise” to test drive this new chapter. There is no hint anyone was even thinking about storming the Capitol at the time of the video conference on December 30th, 2020, about a week before Jan 6. See also the above sections on the purpose of the MOSD chapter and the Proud Boys' true plan for Jan 6 for a more exhaustive review of the relevant evidence. |
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Indictment reads:
45. On January 1, 2021, TARRIO posted separate messages on social media that read,
“Let's bring this new year with one word in mind... Revolt” and later, “New Years Revolution.”
Full context from Parler:
Full context from Parler:
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Included in the indictment because it shows Enrique Tarrio saying scary things which, while once again not
constituting evidence of any actual specific plan to "revolt" or storm the Capitol, complements
the earlier paragraph in the indictment about the “1776 Returns” document while also suggesting to the reader that Tarrio
is probably the sort of person who would do something like storm a Capitol building.
Of course, Enrique Tarrio says lots of things. In fact, he posted a particularly incriminating message on Telegram, ominously foreshadowing the January 6 Capitol siege. In this post, a photograph shows Tarrio standing alone in front of the US Capitol building. Underneath is a caption reading "I'm home. #Soon". 😨 
Seems pretty damning, right? Except, this post wasn't included in the indictment, because Tarrio posted this back in November of 2019. Clearly, Tarrio had no plan to "storm the Capitol" back in 2019, because Trump hadn't even lost the election at that point. No prosecutor could possibly argue that Tarrio had any motive to storm the Capitol back in 2019. Thus, we can conclude either that Tarrio is clairvoyant or owns a time machine, or that he's just a provocative guy who enjoys getting attention from posting vaguely threatening, cryptic messages on social media. Tarrio's posting history on Parler suggests we should not read too deeply into these sort of cryptic messages because they are likely just a form of marketing. Indeed, Tarrio described his own job title in the “Ministry of Self Defense” (MOSD) chapter as “Marketing” (see Govt Exhibit 503-18). Finally, the indictment quotes Tarrio saying “New Years Revolution”, relying on the reader's confirmation bias to assume that the word “Revolution” implies violence. However, in another Parler post from Enrique Tarrio, posted in November of 2020, Tarrio said “You don’t lead a revolution by force... You lead it through inspiration”, suggesting that the word “revolution” did not necessarily imply violence in Tarrio's mind. |
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From Telegram - MOSD Leaders group chat (Government Exhibit 501-50):
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These Telegram posts were not included in the indictment, but they are relevant to the prosecution's argument that evidence of anti-police
sentiment among the Proud Boys is also evidence that the Proud Boys conspired and planned in advance to attack police on Jan 6 as
part of the plan to storm the Capitol. The prosecution also argued that Telegram and Parler posts exhibiting anti-police sentiment
count as evidence that all the preparations the Proud Boys made prior to Jan 6, such as bringing protective
equipment (body armor) and walkie-talkies, was for the express purpose of attacking police, and not for the purpose of
fighting with Antifa and other counter-protesters (as the Proud Boys' defense argued).
A Government Sentencing Memorandum submitted by the prosecution reads:
Sentencing memorandum reads:
As laid bare by the defendants’ own words before and on January 6, the defendants’
preparation for conflict was not focused on Antifa — it was the preparation for conflict with law
enforcement and government officials who they had declared traitors. See, e.g., Ex. 603-33 (Biggs
post about “treat[ing] your think [sic] blue line like we do antifa”); Ex. 501-50 (conspirators
discussing police: “#fucktheblue” … [T]hey chose their fucking side so let’s get this done.”).
Once again, there is no direct evidence the Proud Boys planned to attack police in order to storm the Capitol. All we have are examples of the Proud Boys occasionally expressing anti-police sentiment on Telegram and Parler. Historically, the Proud Boys have generally supported the police. Throughout the late 2010s as the Black Lives Matter movement rose to prominence and police departments across the country faced significant vitriol from the public, the Proud Boys remained mostly loyal to the cops, proudly declaring that “Blue Lives Matter”. In the summer of 2020, Enrique Tarrio retweeted Mark Dice, saying "I stand with the police", and the Philadelphia Proud Boys handed out refreshments to police officers in Philadelphia and signal-boosted the #BackTheBlue hashtag on Telegram. The Seattle Proud Boys attended a pro police rally in Seattle, and the Harrisburg Proud Boys chapter expressed support for the police on Parler. Some media outlets even ran critical stories calling attention to the seemingly cozy relationship between the Proud Boys and local police. This began to change in December of 2020, especially after a series of incidents that happened during the December 12, 2020 “Million MAGA March” rally in Washington DC. Firstly, four Proud Boys (including Jeremy Bertino) got stabbed (see CCTV footage, video of the incident, and police report) and were subsequently hospitalized after an altercation with a counter-protester whom the Proud Boys believed was affiliated with a local Antifa group. 
Secondly, Proud Boy chairman Enrique Tarrio decided to steal a Black Lives Matter banner that was hanging outside Asbury United Methodist Church, an historic black church in D.C., and burn it publicly on the street. This incident was widely reported by the media and framed by some public officials and media outlets as a hate crime, despite the fact that Enrique Tarrio himself is black (Afro-Cuban). Thirdly, as the Proud Boys marched around D.C. the night of December 12, they were often obstructed by police officers on bikes tasked with separating counter-protesters from the Proud Boys. When certain counter protesters retreated behind police lines, some Proud Boys became frustrated and resentful of what they perceived as a police effort to protect counter-protesters affiliated with BLM or Antifa, groups that famously advocated for defunding police departments (because #ACAB). This explains the appearance of the derisive portmanteau "coptifa" among the Proud Boys (see also the Telegram post from Proud Boy "Deplorable51" saying "antifuck is backed by dems police and fbi...".)
Jeremy Bertino (Noble Beard) angry at the DC police during the "Million MAGA March" rally in December of 2020.
Bertino and other leading Proud Boys believed the police were actively
protecting BLM/Antifa
(or other counter-protester groups). See also
tweet from Shelby Talcott.
The Proud Boys' hostility towards the police was rooted in these events, and had nothing to do with January 6th.
The cumulative effect of all this was that some Proud Boy leaders, like Jeremy Bertino, who was stabbed on December 12, 2020, felt betrayed by the police (or at least the DC police): Thus, throughout late December of 2020 and January of 2021, the Proud Boys' leadership became somewhat antagonistic towards the D.C. police, which explains the anti-police messages the Proud Boys posted on Telegram and Parler. The prosecution argued that the Proud Boys turned against the police because the Proud Boys wanted to storm the Capitol and therefore had to attack the police. But the historical context here surrounding the December 12th rally independently explains why the Proud Boys suddenly turned against the police around mid-December of 2020. The Proud Boys' anger towards the police was mostly a result of events during the December 12th, 2020 MAGA rally in DC, and it manifested mostly as resentment over the way that the DC police reacted to Antifa and BLM counter-protesters. None of this had anything at all to do with some secret plan to storm the Capitol. Thus, Telegram or Parler posts from the Proud Boys that exhibit anti-police sentiment are not evidence of a plan to attack police and storm the Capitol. We know why the Proud Boys turned against the cops, and it had nothing to do with Jan 6. |
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From Telegram - MOSD MAIN (Government Exhibits 507-10 and 507-11):
Gabriel PB [in MOSD MAIN Telegram group chat]:
1776 flag flying over the White House last night
E-Geezy (Freedom Reigns) [in MOSD MAIN]:
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These posts were not included in the indictment, which is very odd, since they contain one of the very few clear
references (prior to Jan 6)
of the idea of "storming the Capitol" found among the thousands of Telegram and Parler messages recovered from Proud Boy accounts.
However, the relevant post from Jake Phillips, leader of the Ohio Proud Boys, wherein he asked about the storming
of "capitol buildings", is partially quoted in
a Civil Suit (1:21-cv-03267) filed against the
Proud Boys, where it is misleadingly combined with other Telegram posts from a different day:
Civil Suit (1:21-cv-03267) reads:
This paragraph claims that on January 3rd, 2021, in the MOSD MAIN Telegram
group (called "MOSD Members" in the Civil Suit), the Proud Boys "exchanged messages about attacking the Capitol".
This is incredibly misleading if not outright false, because it suggests the Proud Boys were having
a conversation about storming the Capitol, implying an ongoing logistical discussion about the
details of a plan to storm the Capitol. But we can look for ourselves at the discussions in the
MOSD MAIN Telegram group
on January 3, 2021 (or other days),
and see that no such planning discussions ever happened.
233. On January 3, 2021, members of the MOSD Members Group exchanged messages
about attacking the Capitol. One MOSD member—who had been hand-selected by Tarrio to join
the MOSD—wrote that it was “time to stack those bodies in front of Capitol Hill.” One member
asked, “so are the normies and other attendees going to push thru police lines and storm the capitol
buildings? A few million vs A few hundred coptifa should be enough.” The same MOSD member
also asked, “what would they do [if] 1 million patriots stormed and took the capital [sic] building.
Shoot into the crowd? I think not.” A member of MOSD leadership responded that “[t]hey would
do nothing because they can do nothing.”
The surrounding context reveals that Jake Phillips' post mentioning the storming of "capitol buildings" was a total non-sequitur, not part of some ongoing discussion about storming the Capitol. The surrounding discussion was actually about a photo posted on Facebook by Dan Scavino Jr., the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, showing the White House at night with a beam of light shining down from above. The flag in the photo flying atop the White House is difficult to discern clearly, but the Proud Boys believed it was the 1776 flag, an historical version of the US flag with 13 stars arranged in a circle. (The 1776 pattern is easier to discern in a sharpened version of the photo.) The Proud Boys mistakenly assumed the photo was taken the previous night, when in fact it was originally posted to Facebook over a year earlier in June of 2019. Some of the Proud Boys interpreted the photo as an encouraging sign, perhaps even a signal from President Trump. (User comments below the Facebook post also suggest the photo was interpreted as a signal from President Trump to his supporters.) Jake Phillips wondered rhetorically if the 1776 flag was perhaps a sign heralding a Trump victory that would inspire “normies” (ordinary Trump supporters) to “storm the capitol buildings” en masse. Of course, Jake Phillips' statement here did not exist in a vacuum. The idea of storming or occupying Capitol buildings was a prevalent feature of the ethos surrounding the “Stop the Steal” MAGA movement in late 2020, which centered largely around State Capitol buildings across the US. There were over 3,900 Parler posts (including echoes) from November 2020 through January 5, 2021, that encouraged the storming or occupying of Capitol buildings or other government/administrative buildings to protest the election. Indeed, a US Secret Service intelligence briefing released a week before January 6th reported on a pro-Trump movement “to occupy Capitol Hill” supported by “Stop The Steal” organizers like Ali Alexander. Thus, whether or not the Proud Boys actually had a secret plan to storm the Capitol, it's very likely they would have at least been exposed to the idea via social osmosis. Regardless, there are no references to any actual plan to storm a Capitol building found among the Proud Boy Telegram evidence. Jake Phillips's post was a total non-sequitur, not part of some ongoing logistical discussion about planning an attack on the Capitol. His post was indistinguishable from many of the hundreds of knee-jerk Parler posts calling for Trump supporters to storm Capitol buildings or other administrative buildings. Moreover, Jake Phillips' Telegram post quoted here occurred on January 3, 2021, merely three days before January 6th, yet Jake Phillips asked about storming “capitol buildings” as if this was a novel idea raised for the first time. No other Proud Boys engaged with Jake Phillips' post and there were no replies or follow-ups. More significantly, Jake Phillips wasn't even in Washington D.C. on January 6th and never even planned to go there in the first place. Instead, Jake Phillips made plans to go to Columbus, Ohio on Jan 6, to attend a local protest at the Ohio State Capitol building with his chapter of Ohio Proud Boys. Jake Phillips didn't really even approve of the idea of going to Washington DC on January 6th. He argued that local State Capitol protests would be more effective and easier to organize than one big national rally in Washington DC, and he barely participated in the planning for the Jan 6 rally. So Jake Phillips was not in Washington DC on Jan 6, he never had plans to go there, he was not one of the MOSD leaders, and he was never arrested or charged with anything related to January 6th. Thus, Jake Phillips' non-sequitur remarks about storming capitol buildings are mostly irrelevant to the seditious conspiracy case. The prosecution selectively quoted Jake Phillips out of context to create the illusion that his remarks about the Capitol were part of some ongoing strategic planning discussion, rather than mere fanciful musings about an inspirational Facebook post. In reality, there was never any discussion about a plan to storm the Capitol in any of the Telegram chat groups relevant to the trial. |
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Indictment reads:
[*Note: the indictment incorrectly dates these Telegram posts to Jan 3. The correct date is Jan 4, 2021]
48. On January 3, 2021, members of the MOSD exchanged messages in the MOSD Members Group various statements about attacking the Capitol. In response to the
question, "what would they do [if] 1 million patriots stormed and took the capital building. Shoot into the crowd? I think not," PERSON-3 stated, "They
would do nothing because they can do nothing."
Full context from Telegram - MOSD MAIN (Government Exhibit 507-16):
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This was included in the indictment because it's one of only a handful of instances, out of thousands of Telegram and Parler posts
recovered by the FBI, where any Proud Boy actually said "storm the Capitol" (or any similar phrase) prior to
January 6th, 2021. This paragraph of the indictment is incredibly misleading because it presents a quote
from Proud Boy Jake Phillips, leader of the Ohio Proud Boys, without any context, and claims the quote was part of a conversation wherein
the Proud Boys “exchanged messages in the MOSD Members Group [containing] various statements about attacking the Capitol”.
This misleadingly implies that Jake Phillips' post was part of
an ongoing planning discussion that was actually about the details of a plan to attack the Capitol building.
But when we read Jake Phillips' post in context, we immediately see that no such discussion ever happened. The actual topic of discussion was the certification of Pennsylvania's electoral votes, brought up originally by a Proud Boy named “Kbsman2”. The post from Jake Phillips, rhetorically asking about storming the Capitol, was a complete non-sequitur. It was not part of any ongoing planning discussion about storming the Capitol, and there were no further follow-up posts after Johnny Blackbeard's terse reply. Moreover, this exchange took place on January 4, 2021, merely two days before Jan 6. Yet Jake Phillips rhetorically asked about storming the Capitol as if this were a novel idea brought up here for the first time. If the the prosecution's seditious conspiracy case holds any weight, the Proud Boys should have been finalizing the details of their plan to storm the Capitol by this point, and discussions about storming the Capitol should have dominated the MOSD Telegram chat groups. Instead, all we find are a handful of non-sequitur comments like this one, out of thousands of Telegram posts. Even more significantly, this conversation involved three Proud Boys — Kbsman2, Jake Phillips, and Johnny Blackbeard, none of whom were even present in Washington DC on January 6th. In fact, Jake Phillips, who first brought up the idea of storming the “capital building”, never even planned on going to DC for January 6th and was largely uninvolved in planning for the event. Instead, Jake Phillips and the Ohio Proud Boys went to a protest in Columbus, Ohio on January 6th. Similarly, Kbsman2 and Johnny Blackbeard were Pennsylvania Proud Boys who never showed up in DC on Jan 6 either. Johnny Blackbeard essentially called out sick due to a hernia. Moreover, of the three Proud Boys involved in this brief conversation, only Johnny Blackbeard (John Charles Stewart) was an upper-tier leader with any real authority in the MOSD chapter, and the only one actually arrested and charged with anything, despite not even being present in DC on January 6th. Yet it was Jake Phillips — not Johnny Blackbeard — who first brought up the idea of storming the Capitol. But Jake Phillips wasn’t in DC on January 6 either and was never arrested or implicated in the conspiracy. Jake Phillips didn't even really approve of the Jan 6 rally in DC and was barely involved in planning it, arguing that smaller State Capitol protests would be more effective and easier to organize than one large national rally. But if Jake Phillips’ Telegram post about storming the Capitol is supposed to be compelling evidence of a pre-planned seditious conspiracy, why was Jake Phillips himself never arrested or charged? Finally, it's entirely possible that Jake Phillips wasn't even referring to the US Capitol building here. At the time of these posts in early January of 2021, the "Stop the Steal" movement was ongoing, holding rallies and protests at State Capitol buildings across the USA. These State Capitol protests continued to take place through January 6. To put things in perspective, between November of 2020 and January 5th, 2021, there were 468 Parler posts (including echoes) that exhorted Trump supporters to "storm the Capitol" (or some variation of that phrase). Over half of these Parler posts were actually referring to State Capitol buildings. Similarly, across all of Jake Phillips’ Telegram posts in MOSD MAIN, he used the word “capital/capitol” 7 times, and 5 out of 7 times he was clearly and unambiguously talking about State Capitol buildings. Jake Phillips also stated explicitly that he preferred State Capitol protests over national rallies in Washington DC. Thus, given that Jake Phillips' post about storming the Capitol was in reply to an earlier post from Kbsman2 talking about Pennsylvania's electoral votes, it's quite plausible and even likely that Jake Phillips — who was all about State Capitol rallies — was actually referring to the Pennsylvania Capitol building in Harrisburg. Indeed, Senator Pat Toomey's certification of Pennsylvania's electoral votes was the subject of hundreds of Parler posts during the first week of January in 2021. And as it turns out, a contingent of Pennsylvania Proud Boys showed up at the Pennsylvania Capitol building in Harrisburg to protest on Jan 6. They even posed for a group photo in front of the Pennsylvania Capitol building and claimed they "took the Capitol" (meaning they attended a legal protest at the Pennsylvania Capitol building and posed for a group photo): 
Proud Boys posing in front of the Pennsylvania Capitol Building in Harrisburg, on Jan 6, 2021
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Indictment reads:
49. On January 3, as efforts for January 6 intensified in the MOSD leadership chat, TARRIO stated in the MOSD Leaders Group
that he wanted to wait until January 5 to make final plans. In response, at 7:10 p.m., PERSON-3 posted a voice note to the MOSD
Leaders Group in which he stated:
Well, I mean, the main operating theater should be out in front of the House of Representatives. It should be out in front of the
Capitol building. That's where the vote is taking place, and all the objections. So we can ignore the rest of these stages and all
that shit, and plan the operations base around the front entrance to the Capitol building. Um, I strongly recommend you use the national
mall and not Pennsylvania Avenue, though. It's a wide open space, you can see everything coming from all angles.
RHEL responded that the Capitol was a "good start."
Full context from Telegram - MOSD Leaders (Government Exhibit 501-56):
|
Included in the indictment because one Proud Boy, John Charles Stewart (Johnny Blackbeard), mentions
the Capitol building and recommends planning "the operations base around the front entrance of the Capitol
building" and also recommends using the National Mall, because "it's a wide open space, you can see
everything coming from all angles." This suggests to the reader that Johnny Blackbeard's comment is part of
a planning discussion wherein the Proud Boys were hashing out the details of their plan to storm the Capitol
building. Again, the prosecution relies on the reader's natural confirmation bias to interpret any mention
of the Capitol building or planning in general as evidence of a seditious conspiracy to storm the Capitol.
However, reading the surrounding context reveals that the Proud Boys were simply talking about event planning. Johnny Blackbeard's statement about the Capitol building was in response to Enrique Tarrio's voice message, where he said "I'm getting so many conflicting issues with, like, stages, locations, and times that, um, that I don't know where to put people." But why was Tarrio concerned about "like, stages locations, and times"? Enrique Tarrio was concerned about these things because the Proud Boys had planned to attend the official events on Jan 6, because some Proud Boys had volunteered to work security for these events, and Enrique Tarrio was very likely booked as a guest speaker on Jan 6 at the “Latinos for Trump” stage at “Area 7” (300 First Street NE) by the Capitol between 10 AM and 12 PM. This is why Zach Rehl asks "Is [Enrique Tarrio] still doing a speech? Where is that?" The Proud Boys often worked security details at rallies or protest events, providing security for high profile conservatives or ordinary Trump supporters attending the event. We know from various sources, including the MOSD video conference on December 30 (see transcript), that multiple Proud Boys, including those in Tarrio's chapter, were scheduled to work security at the "Latinos for Trump" stage by the US Capitol on Jan 6: 
Proud Boy working security detail at an Ohio rally in August, 2020
Thus, Enrique Tarrio's complaint about "conflicting issues" with "like, stages, locations, and times" referred to the official events planned for the Jan 6 rally, organized by various groups associated with the “Stop The Steal” movement. Tarrio was getting "conflicting issues" because the official event planning for Jan 6 was somewhat of a confusing mess during the last week of December 2020 (especially before it was publicly known that President Trump would be giving a speech at the Ellipse), because there were multiple non-profit organizations associated with the “Stop The Steal” movement, including Women for America First and the 80 Percent Coalition, who were vying for control of the event planning and the event permits for the various rallies and protests scheduled for January 6. This created much uncertainty over scheduled times and locations. (See the depositions of Amy Kremer, Caroline Wren, and Brandon Straka, for testimony about all the confusion during the event planning for Jan 6.) Enrique Tarrio was very likely scheduled to give a speech on Jan 6 at the "Latinos for Trump" stage near the Capitol building at “Area 7” (300 First Street NE) between 10 AM and 12 PM. (See Loomer on Parler, and trial testimony of George Mesa and Jeremy Bertino, plus Zach Rehl asking about Tarrio's speech. Tarrio was also the Florida State director of Latinos for Trump.) Therefore, since many of the official events for the Jan 6 rally were to take place near the Capitol building, and since multiple Proud Boys — including George "Asher" Mesa and some Proud Boys from Tarrio's chapter — were scheduled to work security at the “Latinos for Trump” stage by the Capitol building on Jan 6, Johnny Blackbeard recommended establishing "the operations base" by the Capitol building on the National Mall side. Obviously, the "wide open space, [where] you can see everything coming from all angles" would make it easier for Proud Boys working security to detect threats from counter-protesters and secure the area around the stage. Finally, Johnny Blackbeard's concern about “the signals coming out of D.C. Metro” reflected his fear that the DC Metropolitan Police might potentially arrest Enrique Tarrio or other Proud Boys on site, because of the investigation into Tarrio's burning of a Black Lives Matter banner along with “intel” from MPD Officer Shane Lamond, Tarrio's contact in the DC Metro Police department. As it turns out, the DC Metro Police did in fact arrest Enrique Tarrio shortly after he arrived in Washington DC on January 4th, 2021. Once again, the context surrounding these allegedly incriminating Telegram posts reveals that they're about basic event planning, and have absolutely nothing to do with any secret plan to storm the Capitol. |
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Indictment reads:
50. On January 4, 2021, TARRIO posted a voice note to the MOSD Leaders Group at
7:36 a.m. in which he stated, “I didn't hear this voice note until now, you want to storm the
Capitol.”
Full context from Telegram - MOSD Leaders (Government Exhibit 501-57):
Enrique Tarrio [
 Listen to original audio]:
|
This Telegram post is one of the most important pieces of evidence for the prosecution's case.
Enrique Tarrio, chairman of the Proud Boys, actually said the words “storm the Capitol”
on Telegram, two days before January 6th.
This is one of only five instances,
across thousands of
Telegram and Parler posts recovered by the FBI, where any Proud Boy actually said the phrase “storm the Capitol” (or any similar
phrase), prior to January 6th, 2021. This is also the only instance where an actual upper-tier MOSD leader said this phrase.
Yet like all of the other four instances, this Telegram post does not demonstrate that the Proud Boys ever had an
actual plan to storm the Capitol.
Enrique Tarrio's comment was likely a reply to an earlier voice message from Johnny Blackbeard. But Tarrio's comment here was a complete non-sequitur, not part of any ongoing planning discussion about storming the Capitol, and there were no replies or follow-up posts that we know about. Furthermore, Enrique Tarrio posted this on January 4th, a mere two days before Jan 6. But the prosecution argued that the conspiracy to storm the Capitol began as early as December 19th, 2020. Intuitively, if the prosecution's seditious conspiracy case had any merit, any plans to storm the Capitol should have been nearly finalized by January 4th, and should have dominated the discussions in the MOSD Telegram group chats. Instead, all we have are a handful of isolated, non-sequitur comments like this, with no specific details and no engagement from other Proud Boys. But if there was no secret conspiracy to storm the Capitol, how do we explain Enrique Tarrio's post here? One possibility is that Tarrio was simply joking. But it's also possible Tarrio was actually seriously considering trying to storm the Capitol. He certainly expressed approval and celebrated when hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6th. But again, there's simply no evidence that the Proud Boys actually made plans in advance of Jan 6 to storm the Capitol. In Enrique Tarrio's voice message (listen for yourself), he says “you want to storm the Capitol” with a rising-falling intonation that suggests feigned bemusement. But why would Enrique Tarrio joke about storming the Capitol, or even bring up such an idea, if the Proud Boys weren't already planning on storming the Capitol, or at least considering such a plan? Well, Enrique Tarrio wasn't operating in a vacuum. The idea of "storming the Capitol" was very popular with the online MAGA-sphere at the time. From November 2020 through January 5th, 2021, there were around 468 Parler posts (including echoes) exhorting Trump supporters to storm Capitol buildings or other administrative centers, averaging around 40,943 daily views. This includes calls to storm both State Capitol buildings and the US Capitol building in DC. In fact, “storming the Capitol building” doesn't even necessarily refer to a violent or illegal act. It can sometimes mean something like "occupying the Capitol". For example, in November of 2020, Alex Jones legally led a contingent of Trump supporters inside the Georgia State Capitol building, where they stood around with signs and chanted slogans before leaving peacefully. Yet The Gateway Pundit, a conservative news outlet, reported that Jones led a “Crowd of Trump Supporters Storming [the] Georgia State Capitol”. Some journalists on Twitter also referred to this completely legal demonstration as “storm[ing] the Capitol” as well. Clearly, the phrase “storm the Capitol” was sometimes used in the sense of “occupy the Capitol” — suggesting a more legitimate form of political protest rather than a violent insurrection. Indeed, the phrase “occupy the Capitol”, or some variation of it, appeared on Parler around 3,450 times from November 2020 through January 5th, 2021. The concept of “storming” or “occupying” Capitol buildings was a prevalent feature of the ethos surrounding the “Stop the Steal” movement in late 2020, which centered largely around State Capitol buildings across the US. Indeed, a US Secret Service intelligence briefing released a week before January 6th reported on a pro-Trump movement “to occupy Capitol Hill” supported by “Stop The Steal” organizers like Ali Alexander. Thus, whether or not the Proud Boys actually had a secret plan to storm the Capitol, it's very likely they would have at least been exposed to the idea via social osmosis. It's therefore not at all unlikely that the Proud Boys would find occasion to joke about it. 
Promotional graphic circulating among the “Stop the Steal” community in December 2020. The Secret Service
was well aware of
calls on social media to “Occupy the Capitol”
and assumed this phrase implied peaceful demonstrations
at State capitols.
Even if Enrique Tarrio wasn't joking, the few instances among the Telegram evidence where a Proud Boy said the phrase “storm the Capitol” (or something similar) are mostly non-sequiturs and basically indistinguishable from many of the hundreds of knee-jerk Parler posts calling for Trump supporters to storm Capitols or other buildings, not to mention similar calls to “storm the Capitol” from left-wing or anti-Trump social media accounts. Of course, Telegram posts from the Proud Boys containing the phrase “storm the Capitol” arguably deserve more scrutiny than similar posts from random Trump supporters on Parler, because some Proud Boys actually did storm the Capitol on January 6th. But then again, so did hundreds of random Trump supporters. Interestingly, the only two Proud Boys who actually said the phrase “storm the Capitol” on Telegram (i.e. Enrique Tarrio and Jake Phillips) were not even present in Washington DC on January 6th. Therefore, their Telegram posts containing the phrase “storm the Capitol” arguably have little more weight than the hundreds of similar posts from random Trump supporters, with Enrique Tarrio's leadership role perhaps providing justification for some additional scrutiny. Regardless, none of these Telegram posts constitute evidence of actual planning, and ultimately there's no evidence the Proud Boys planned the Capitol riot in advance. In fact, there's a large body of exculpatory evidence to the contrary. For example, on January 2, 2021, just 2 days before Tarrio posted this voice message on Telegram, Tarrio posted another voice message in the MOSD Leadership group chat (Government Exhibit 501-53) in response to a Tweet someone posted accusing the Proud Boys of planning to break into Federal buildings on January 6th. Enrique Tarrio joked about the implausibility of this, sarcastically pointing out that the Proud Boys could barely even march in formation correctly, and were therefore not even remotely capable of doing something as “cool” as storming a Federal building:
Charles Donohoe (YutYut Cowabunga) [in MOSD Leadership group chat]:
The above Telegram conversation is yet another piece of strong exculpatory evidence. These posts
occurred in a private Telegram group chat that the Proud Boys believed to be secure at the time. It is therefore
highly probable that the sarcasm expressed by Tarrio and Johnny Blackbeard reflected
their genuine beliefs at the time. Thus, it's pretty clear that
Enrique Tarrio didn't believe the Proud Boys would even be capable
of orchestrating an attack on the US Capitol building. It is therefore highly likely that when Tarrio said
to Johnny Blackbeard “you wanna storm the Capitol”, he was simply joking.
Perhaps Tarrio even intended the joke as a “call back” to the earlier
conversation on January 2nd, where Tarrio and Johnny Blackbeard exchanged sarcastic remarks about
“how fucking retarded our members are”.
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Indictment reads:
51. On January 4, 2021, within one hour of TARRIO's arrest pursuant to a warrant issued by D.C. Superior Court, Donohoe created a new group on the
encrypyed message application for MOSD leadership ("New MOSD Leaders Group") that did not initially include TARRIO. Donohoe then advised the other
leaders, "Each one of us should personally clear our history of the MOSD chat." REHL responded, "you gotta manually delete each message from each
chat" and then added, "since [TARRIO] knew the cops were for him, hopefully he logged outta" the encrypted messaging service. Donohoe responded,
"Well at least they won't get our boots on ground plans because we are one step ahead of them."
Full context from
New MOSD Telegram group chat (Government Exhibits 509-2 and 509-4):
|
Included in the indictment because it shows the Proud Boys were trying to hide something when
they considered deleting messages from the MOSD Telegram chat group after Enrique Tarrio
was
arrested shortly after arriving in DC on January 4th, 2021. The Proud Boys
feared that law enforcement would gain access to the private MOSD
Telegram chat group after confiscating Enrique Tarrio's phone. Additionally, Charles Donohoe's statement
“at least they won't get our boots on ground plans” implies the Proud Boys made certain
plans that they were trying to keep hidden from law enforcement. Basic confirmation bias may lead some readers
to assume that Donohoe was referring to secret plans to storm the Capitol building.
During the conspiracy trial, the jury considered this talk of deleting messages to be strong evidence of guilt. Of course, the complete lack of any direct evidence of advance planning to storm the Capitol should have been sufficient for a "not guilty" verdict based on reasonable doubt. Nonetheless, it's certainly fair to ask: if the Proud Boys really didn't make plans prior to Jan 6 to storm the Capitol, then why did they act as if they had something to hide? Why were they so afraid that the cops might read their Telegram chats? If the Proud Boys merely planned on coming to DC to attend the rally, then what exactly were they afraid of? Why was Charles Donohoe so concerned about the cops finding out about their “boots on ground” plans? Firstly, the surrounding context (omitted from the indictment) reveals that the Proud Boys actually didn't bother to delete any messages from the MOSD group chat. Aaron Wolkin expressed the opinion (excluded from the indictment) that deleting messages was a “waste of time”, because (according to Wolkin) “Google and apple key log everything that you type into your phone anyways”. Zach Rehl added that permanently erasing Telegram messages from the server would be a cumbersome process. Regardless, even if the Proud Boys were too lazy to actually delete any messages, they were still clearly distressed over the possibility that law enforcement might read their private Telegram chats after confiscating Enrique Tarrio's phone. This is best explained by the fact that the Proud Boys leadership had a strong OPSEC (operational security) ethos, and there are numerous reasons why the Proud Boys would want to prevent their private chats from falling into the hands of law enforcement aside from any secret plans to storm the US Capitol. While the Proud Boys' actual plan for January 6th mostly involved legal activities like attending the official events, giving speeches, working security details, and marching around the streets of DC chanting “Fuck Antifa!”, they also regularly discussed illegal activities on Telegram, like bringing restricted weapons to DC and getting into violent street battles with Antifa. The Proud Boys used the umbrella term “Antifa” to refer to various regional anti-fascist or anarchist collectives (called “Anarchist Violent Extremists” by the FBI), known for using "Black Bloc" gear and tactics, and for disrupting pro-Trump demonstrations and fighting with the Proud Boys (Antifa considers the Proud Boys to be a fascist organization). The Proud Boys expected to fight Antifa on the streets of DC on January 6 after dark, just as they did during the previous two MAGA rallies in DC on November 14th and December 12th of 2020. Indeed, US Capitol Police intelligence, the US Secret Service, and the US Park Police also predicted that violent street fighting would break out after dark between the Proud Boys and Antifa (or other counter-protester groups) on January 6th, echoing similar predictions about the previous DC rally in December of 2020: “[I]ndividuals who self-identify with the Antifa identity ... [are] the main opposition group where historically the most violent action originates. These individuals are believed to have been the main combatants with the Proud Boys during the 14 November demonstrations.” The Proud Boys sometimes used the phrase “in minecraft” or “playing minecraft” as a euphemism for doing something violent or illegal. They often used this phrase when discussing their plans to fight with Antifa. For example, the following exchange took place on Telegram in the MOSD MAIN chat group (see Government Exhibit 503-17): Here, a Proud Boy using the Telegram handle “Vito (il Duce) Russo” proposes a (clearly illegal) plan to dress up like Antifa, ambush them and “beat the motherfuck out of them”. Additionally, in the MOSD Ops Telegram chat group, the Proud Boys had numerous discussions about protective gear and weapons for fighting Antifa. The Proud Boys discussed illegally bringing a restricted type of knife into Washington DC: There was extensive discussion in the MOSD Ops Telegram chat group about various weaponary to use in a street fight with Antifa, including high powered strobe lights or laser pointers, gel pepper spray, and a “mini flamethrower”:
Richard WD Stomper [in MOSD Ops on Telegram]:
👆🏿
Also if they stobe you pull out gel pepper spray and send it flying in the strobes direction. You can get away as they back up, for other guys behind you to come clean up the trash I've had this before they knew what it was. I gave the other one to my favorite nephew. This laser will will burn your eye out 
U can't look at it without sunglasses on 
I need to charge it Firstly, these discussions conclusively demonstrate that preparations made by the Proud Boys prior to Jan 6, such as acquiring protective gear and various weapons like pepper spray, were done in anticipation of fighting with Antifa, NOT for the purpose of attacking police and storming the Capitol as the prosecution claimed. Throughout the entire MOSD Ops chat, spanning from January 1 thru January 4, 2021, and containing around 690 individual posts, there was not a single mention of any plans to attack police or storm the Capitol. (The Capitol building was mentioned only once, when somebody brought up the Hyatt Hotel near the Capitol building.) The discussion was focused almost entirely on combat strategies, weapons, communication equipment, and protective gear for an anticipated fight with Antifa. Secondly, these discussions make it abundantly clear why the Proud Boys would not have wanted law enforcement to read their private Telegram chats. The Proud Boys discussed many illegal or border-line illegal activities, such as bringing restricted weapons into Washington DC, using laser pointers that will “burn your eye out”, using a “mini-flamethrower”, as well as various comments about knocking out or otherwise assaulting Antifa members. One Proud Boy even admitted to assaulting a police officer during a previous rally. On top of this, these group chats also contained offensive jokes and memes, slurs, and posts glorifying violence with various degrees of sincerity. All of this suggests some pretty compelling reasons for the Proud Boys to have wanted to keep their private Telegram chats away from the prying eyes of law enforcement. If all that wasn't enough of a reason, the Proud Boys also became very distrustful of the DC police following the December 12th “Million MAGA March” rally in DC. The DC Metro police and National Park police were tasked with keeping counter-protesters separated from the Proud Boys, which some Proud Boy leaders, like Jeremy Bertino, interpreted as a police effort to protect Antifa or BLM counter-protesters. On Telegram in the MOSD Leadership group chat (Government Exhibit 501-56), Proud Boy John Charles Stewart (a.k.a. Johnny Blackbeard) expressed concern that DC Metro police officers may try to ambush individual Proud Boys in DC “from a fucking side street” and arrest them on site. The earlier arrest of Enrique Tarrio on January 4th by the DC Metro Police only further intensified the Proud Boys' paranoia and animosity towards law enforcement. It is therefore quite easy to understand why the Proud Boys would want to prevent law enforcement from reading their private Telegram chats, regardless of whether the Proud Boys actually had any secret plans to storm the Capitol or not. See also the above section discussing the Proud Boys' increasing animosity towards the DC police in December of 2020. |
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Indictment reads:
53. At 7:15 p.m. on January 4, Donohoe posted a message on New MOSD Members
Group that read, “Hey have been instructed and listen to me real good! There is no planning of any
sorts. I need to be put into whatever new thing is created. Everything is compromised and we can
be looking at Gang charges.” Donohoe then wrote, “Stop everything immediately” and then “This
comes from the top.” Donohoe's messages in the New MOSD Members Group repeated those
posted by a participant in the MOSD Members Group.
Full context from
MOSD MAIN 2 Telegram group chat (ECF 110-4, ECF 111-1, Government Exhibit 510-6):
|
Included in the indictment because MOSD leader Charles Donohoe said “we can be looking at Gang charges”
after
Enrique Tarrio was arrested in DC on January 4, 2021, for
burning
a Black Lives Matter banner
belonging to a church during the previous MAGA rally in DC on December 12th, 2020. The prosecution
interpreted whatever Charles Donohoe
meant by “gang charges” as a damning admission that the Proud Boys were involved in
a seditious conspiracy to storm the Capitol.
Some of the context surrounding Donohoe's statement is likely missing from the available Telegram extractions. However, there is enough context to make it clear that the topic of discussion was Proud Boy Chairman Enrique Tarrio's arrest after arriving in DC on January 4, 2021. It's likely that Charles Donohoe was actually thinking about the potential charges against Enrique Tarrio, rather than conspiracy charges against the Proud Boys as a group, when he said “we can be looking at Gang charges”. This becomes more plausible when the surrounding context is considered, particularly the subsequent discussion about federal charges beginning with the post from Dick Sweats saying: “We all need to see what [Tarrio] has been charged with first”. Initially, some media outlets reported that Tarrio's burning of the BLM banner would be investigated as a hate crime. However, an internal MPD email from Officer Shane Lamond reveals that the hate crime angle never gained much traction. Nonetheless, private correspondence on WhatsApp between MPD Officer Shane Lamond and Special Agent Ben Tyler suggests that Tarrio's arrest was politically motivated: A later SMS correspondence on January 1st, 2021, between MPD Officer Shane Lamond and NYPD Officer John Donohue revealed that both officers perceived a political motivation behind Tarrio's arrest warrant: Initially, Tarrio was to be charged with a misdemeanor for destruction of property for burning the BLM flag. But when he was arrested in DC, Tarrio was also found to be in possession of two empty firearm magazines. It's unclear how the “gang charges” mentioned by Charles Donohoe entered the picture, but perhaps Tarrio's lawyer, aware of the politics behind Tarrio's arrest, floated this possibility at some point. By "gang charges" Charles Donohoe was likely referring to something like 18 U.S. Code § 521, a federal law code allowing for increased sentences for certain crimes (drug trafficking, violence, etc.) committed by members of a “criminal street gang”. Perhaps the fear was that a DC prosecutor might try to argue that the Proud Boys as an organization meets the legal definition of a violent “criminal street gang” based on a history of fighting counter-protesters, thereby significantly increasing the severity of the charges against Tarrio. The Proud Boys were also concerned that the DC police would confiscate Tarrio's phone and gain access to private Telegram group chats like MOSD. To prevent this from happening, Charles Donohoe, with help from other Proud Boys, led a mass exodus from the MOSD Telegram group chats (including MOSD, MOSD MAIN and MOSD Ops) and created new replacement group chats such as New MOSD and MOSD MAIN 2. During the conspiracy trial, the prosecution implied that the primary reason the Proud Boys wanted to conceal their private Telegram chats from law enforcement was because the Proud Boys were secretly planning to storm the Capitol on January 6th. But there is no evidence that the Proud Boys made any such plan in advance of Jan 6, and there are numerous other reasons the Proud Boys would have wanted to conceal their private chats from law enforcement. While the Proud Boys most likely did not conspire in advance to storm the Capitol, they certainly did plan on doing various illegal or border-line illegal things in Washington DC that they discussed openly on Telegram. This included illegally bringing restricted weapons into Washington DC in anticipation of violent street fights with Antifa. The Proud Boys also discussed using weapons such as gel pepper spray and a “mini flamethrower” against Antifa. One Proud Boy even admitted to assaulting a police officer at a previous rally. There were many such private discussions on Telegram about doing illegal things “in minecraft”. Therefore, the Proud Boys had very good reasons to want to keep their private Telegram chats away from the prying eyes of law enforcement, regardless of whether or not the Proud Boys truly had a secret plan to storm the Capitol. See also the above section discussing the Proud Boys' increasing animosity towards the DC police in December of 2020. |
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Indictment reads:
54. On January 4, 2021, at 8:20p.m., PERSON-2 posted a message in the New MOSD
Leaders Group: “We had originally planned on breaking the guys into teams. Let's start divying
them up and getting baofeng channels picked out.” Baofeng is a manufacturer of hand held radios
and other communications equipment.
Full context from
New MOSD Telegram group chat (Government Exhibit 509-11):
|
Included in the indictment because it establishes that the Proud Boys had some form of a plan on Jan 6, and
they used hand-held radios (Baofeng radios) to coordinate. The prosecution
framed any evidence of preparation or planning, including the use of communication equipment, as evidence
of a secret plan to storm the Capitol devised in advance of Jan 6.
(See
paragraph
28 of the indictment.)
The prosecution's argument that any evidence of planning in general is also specifically evidence of a pre-planned seditious conspiracy to storm the Capitol is completely fallacious. The Proud Boys routinely made plans and used communication equipment when attending rallies. These plans generally took the form of an itinerary for the day before the rally, including a pre-rally security brief, and an itinerary for the day of the rally itself, which included rules for interacting with the public and recruiting new members, a day-time march through the streets, and sometimes a night march as well. When the Proud Boys mentioned their "plans" for Jan 6 on Telegram, they were referring to a similarly mundane itinerary. For an example of an ACTUAL Proud Boy plan/itinerary for a rally before January 6, see the official plans/itinerary for the December 12, 2020 rally (Govt Exhibit 548-2), posted by Proud Boy Chairman Enrique Tarrio in a private Telegram group a few days before that rally: Note the similarities between this plan/itinerary for the December 12 rally and what little we know of the Jan 6 rally plan. Firstly, most of the same people involved with planning the December 12 rally later went on to join the MOSD chapter where they would help plan for Jan 6. Both rallies also involved a day-time march through Washington DC. During the planning for both rallies, Enrique Tarrio emphasized rules for interacting with the public and rules about wearing official club colors. Notably, in the above-quoted plans for December 12, Enrique Tarrio issued strict rules addressing behavior and discipline, ordering the Proud Boys to follow the itinerary and stay together, to always act "IN SELF DEFENSE", and not to speak to the media but also not to actively prevent the media from doing their job. This is all very similar to the topics discussed during the MOSD video conference (see transcript) a week before the January 6 rally. It's obvious that seeds of the Ministry of Self Defense (MOSD) chapter were already forming in Tarrio's mind even before the December 12 rally, as he already seemed frustrated over behavioral/disciplinary issues, emphasizing the need to stay together and act defensively before the MOSD chapter existed. Unfortunately, no similarly detailed itinerary for the Jan 6 rally was found among the Telegram evidence. But we don't need such an itinerary, because Enrique Tarrio clearly explained the true plan for the Jan 6 rally: to field test the new MOSD chapter — to take it for a spin out in the streets of DC and test the new command structure to see if it worked as anticipated. This is consistent with Tarrio's description of the plan for Jan 6 as a “training exercise” and Charles Donohoe's description of the plan for Jan 6 as “a simple and quick mission”. The objective was to hold a daytime march, navigating the streets of DC as a cohesive, disciplined, well-oiled infantry, divided into 10 man squads, while remaining close together as a “nucleus” — that is, as “one fucking unit”: This is also consistent with Enrique Tarrio's announcement posted on December 29, 2020, in the MOSD MAIN Telegram group, where he said “we are going to be using the 6th as a test [of the new MOSD chapter]”. Thus, the Proud Boys' true plan for Jan 6 is no mystery. Enrique Tarrio directly explained the objective during the MOSD video conference on December 30, 2020 (see full transcript), and it had nothing to do with any seditious conspiracy to attack the Capitol. However, while the Proud Boys' overall plan for January 6 is clear, an exact itinerary for the January 6 rally that includes things like precise marching routes (similar to the itinerary for the December 12th rally posted above) was never posted on Telegram (or at least not included among the Telegram exhibits). This is most likely because Enrique Tarrio was arrested on January 4th, 2021, throwing the Proud Boys' pre-rally planning into chaos. Indeed, on the day of Jan 6 at around noon, about 45 minutes before the Capitol riot began, Johnny Blackbeard posted a voice message in the New MOSD Telegram group (Govt Exhibit 509-30), addressing the fact that some Proud Boys had become frustrated over the lack of direction. Johnny Blackbeard went into damage control mode, admitting things didn't exactly go according to plan and that an "AAR" (After Action Report) would be held to figure out what went wrong this time so that similar mistakes could be avoided at the next rally. Johnny Blackbeard attributed the lack of direction to various “hiccups”, including Enrique Tarrio's arrest: Johnny Blackbeard posted a similar voice message in MOSD MAIN 2 (see Govt Exhibit 510-31). Johnny Blackbeard's message came after some Proud Boys on the ground in DC complained about a lack of direction and lack of any plan. Shortly after Johnny Blackbeard posted the above-quoted voice message on Telegram to reassure the rank-and-file Proud Boys on the ground in DC, another Proud Boy (using the Telegram handle “Do you want total war”) posted in MOSD MAIN 2 (see Govt Exhibit 510-32), saying: It's clear that on the morning of January 6th, many Proud Boys perceived a major lack of leadership and direction, and decided to act autonomously, going off to march on their own. Additionally, one Proud Boy felt that the plans for Jan 6 were basically “a mirror” of the plan for December 12th. The plan for December 12th, quoted above in full, was basically just to march from Freedom Plaza to the Supreme Court. It's clear that while the MOSD leaders probably came up with some itinerary or plan for Jan 6, most likely involving one or more marches around DC like the previous rally on December 12, the details of this plan were very poorly communicated. As late as 11:12 AM on January 6, less than two hours before the Capitol riot began, the MOSD leadership was still struggling to communicate a coherent plan: This conversation occurred less than two hours before Trump supporters began storming the Capitol on Jan 6. And yet Proud Boy Aaron Wolkind, one of the leaders and chief organizers of the MOSD chapter, still didn't even know the exact plan. Meanwhile, Johnny Blackbeard, another MOSD leader, expressed concerned about groups of Proud Boys going off on their own due to a lack of leadership, while Zach Rehl was “doing our thing” with the MOSD Proud Boys on the ground in DC. It strains credulity to believe these guys really had some secret plan to storm the Capitol. About 40 minutes later, less than an hour before the Capitol riot began, MOSD leader Aaron Wolkind still seemed to be confused about the plan (see Govt Exhibit 509-29): Thus, the Telegram evidence paints a picture of confusion, lack of leadership, and half-baked planning on the morning of January 6th. None of this lends any credibility to the prosecution's seditious conspiracy case. |
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Indictment reads:
56. On January 5, 2021, at 5:25 p.m., BIGGS posted a message to the Boots on Ground
group that read, “Just trying to get our numbers. So we can plan accordingly for tonight and go
over tomorrow's plan.”
Full context from
Boots on the Ground Telegram group chat (Government Exhibit 512-3, ECF 41):
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Included in the indictment because Joe Biggs' Telegram post referred to “tomorrow's plan”, establishing that the Proud Boys
had a plan on January 6th. No actual details about this plan are provided,
but the prosecution relied on the reader's natural confirmation bias to
interpret any mention of a “plan” or “planning” in general as evidence specifically
of a secret plan to storm the Capitol building devised in advance of Jan 6.
But the context surrounding Joe Biggs' post reveals that whatever plan the MOSD leadership had for January 6, it was devised at the last minute and very poorly communicated to both the rank-and-file Proud Boys and the MOSD leadership. Joe Biggs mentioned “tomorrow's plan” at 5:25 PM on January 5th, but hours later at around 9:07 PM on January 5th, the MOSD leadership was still asking basic questions about the “plan” (see Govt Exhibit 509-23): Finally, at around 9:20 PM on January 5th, Joe Biggs chimed in and claimed to (finally) have a plan (see Govt Exhibit 509-23): Note that even this late in the game, on January 5 at 9:20 PM, Proud Boy Charles Donohoe, a key member of the MOSD leadership, was still asking “what's the plan”. Even after Joe Biggs said “we have a plan”, no specific details were discussed or revealed, at least not on Telegram. Instead, the MOSD Proud Boys agreed that everyone should meet at the Washington Monument at 10 AM the next morning (the morning of Jan 6), where further details “will be laid out at the pre meeting!” (Govt Exhibit 509-24). Yet even on the day of January 6, less than two hours before the Capitol riot began, a member of the MOSD leadership was still asking for basic information about the “plan” (see Govt Exhibit 509-29): This conversation occurred less than two hours before the Capitol riot began, yet Aaron Wolkind, one of the leaders and chief organizers of the MOSD chapter, still didn't know the plan. At the same time, Johnny Blackbeard warned that some “rank and file” Proud Boys decided to act autonomously and head elsewhere to march on their own, due to a lack of leadership and direction. About 40 minutes later, less than one hour before the Capitol riot, Aaron Wolkind was still asking basic questions about the the plan (see Govt Exhibit 509-29): Thus, while the indictment selectively quoted Telegram posts to suggest the Proud Boys had some secret plan to storm the Capitol that they devised in advance of Jan 6, there is simply no evidence that any such plan existed. The Telegram evidence suggests that Enrique Tarrio's arrest on January 4th disrupted the original plan to field test the new MOSD chapter. Joe Biggs and Ethan Nordean therefore scrambled to come up with a modified plan at the last minute, but it was poorly communicated to other members of the MOSD chapter. |
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Indictment reads:
57. On January 5, 2021, at 5:52p.m., BIGGS posted a message to the Boots on Ground
group that read: “We are trying to avoid getting into any shit tonight. Tomorrow's the day” and
then “I'm here with rufio and a good group[.]”
Full context from
Boots on the Ground Telegram Group Chat (ECF 41, Government Exhibit 512-4):
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Included in the indictment because Joe Biggs said “tomorrow's the day” on January 5th, 2021, suggesting
that the Proud Boys had some “big plans” for January 6th. Yet again, no actual details about tomorrow's
“big plans” were mentioned. The prosecution
relied on the reader's natural confirmation bias to interpret any mention
of a plan or planning in general as evidence specifically of a secret plan to storm the Capitol.
As mentioned above in the analysis of paragraph 56 of the indictment, the full context of Joe Biggs' post reveals that whatever plan the MOSD leadership had for January 6, it was devised at the last minute and very poorly communicated to other MOSD members. Joe Biggs hinted at some sort of plan for Jan 6 after one of the rank-and-file Proud Boys complained there was “no fuckin plan either“. Yet no specific details of this plan were divulged on Telegram, and later that evening and on the day of January 6 itself as late as 12:00 noon (less than one hour before the Capitol began), MOSD leaders were still asking basic questions about “the plan” and warning about a lack of leadership (see Govt Exhibits 509-23 and 509-29): |
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Indictment reads:
59. At 8:00 p.m., PEZZOLA posted a message on Boots on Ground that stated,
“Anybody need coms programmed hit me up.”
Full context from
Boots on the Ground Telegram group chat (Governments Exhibit 512-4):
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This is included in the indictment simply to reiterate that Dominic Pezzola was
a member of the MOSD chapter. The prosecution believed it was important to emphasize this,
because they also claimed that the first rioters to enter the Capitol building
entered through a broken window that Dominic Pezzola smashed with a riot shield.
Dominic Pezzola's defense admitted that he smashed a window using a riot shield, but denied that Pezzola was the first person to actually breach the Capitol building on Jan 6, claiming that an unidentified individual wearing a red cap, glasses and a red sweater first shattered the window. (The truth in this case is nuanced and perhaps open to interpretation: see the above analysis of paragraph 39 of the indictment.) Dominic Pezzola was a rank-and-file member of the MOSD, not a MOSD leader. Pezzola joined the Proud Boys less than two months before Jan 6 (see trial testimony of Lisa Magee). Pezzola was not a member of the MOSD leadership group chat, and only joined MOSD MAIN — the Telegram group chat for rank-and-file Proud Boys — on the evening of January 2nd, a mere four days before January 6th. Furthermore, Dominic Pezzola ("Spazzo - 2nd°" on Telegram) barely posted anything at all on Telegram. Only three posts from Pezzola appear among the MOSD MAIN Exhibits, and all three are just hellos and greetings. In the Boots on the Ground Telegram chat group Dominic Pezzola only posted twice (at least among the available exhibits): once to say “Just arrived” (Govt Exhibit 512-3) and another time to say “Anybody need coms programmed hit me up” (Govt Exhibit 512-4). If it weren't for the fact that Dominic Pezzola happened to be one of the first rioters to breach the Capitol building on January 6th, the prosecution likely would not have even bothered to include him in the indictment. Ultimately, Dominic Pezzola was the only Proud Boy acquitted of the seditious conspiracy charge. |
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Indictment reads:
60. On January 5, 2021, at 8:27p.m., an MOSD member who was in Washington, D.C.
with NORDEAN and BIGGS posted a message to New MOSD Members Group that read:
“Everyone needs to meet at the Washington Monument at 10 am tomorrow morning! Do not be
late! Do not wear colors! Details will be laid out at the pre meeting! Come out at as patriot!” The
same message was posted by PERSON-1 in the Boots on Ground group at 8:28 p.m.
Full context from
MOSD MAIN 2 Telegram group chat:
Full context from
Boots On The Ground Telegram group chat (Government Exhibit 512-5):
Full context from
New MOSD Telegram group chat (Government Exhibit 509-24):
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Included in the indictment because it establishes that the Proud Boys had some sort of plan
on January 6th, and that one component of this plan involved meeting at the Washington Monument
at 10 AM on the morning of January 6, without dressing in official Proud Boy
club colors. This paragraph of the indictment is one of several paragraphs that selectively
quotes Telegram posts to misleadingly imply that the Proud Boys had some
secret, detailed plan to storm the Capitol, devised in advance of Jan 6.
But the full context reveals firstly that no actual details of this “plan” were ever divulged on Telegram, beyond the initial meeting location. Certainly, nothing about a plan to storm the Capitol was ever mentioned. Secondly, the full context reveals there was significant confusion regarding the “plan” and a general lack of clarity and direction throughout the morning of January 6th, 2021. After Enrique Tarrio was arrested on January 4th, the MOSD chapter fell into disarray and the original plan for Jan 6 was partially abandoned: It's clear that at this point, the rank-and-file Proud Boys in the MOSD chapter had no idea about any specific plans for Jan 6. But even the senior MOSD leaders like Joe Biggs and Jeremy Bertino were not exactly on the same page about the plan for Jan 6. During the December 30th, 2020 MOSD video conference (see transcript), Enrique Tarrio clearly explained the plan for January 6: Tarrio wanted to use the January 6 rally to conduct a training exercise to field test the MOSD chapter — to take it for a spin out in the streets of DC and test the new command structure. This is consistent with Charles Donohoe's description of the plan for Jan 6 as “a simple and quick mission”. The objective was to divide the MOSD Proud Boys into smaller ten-man teams while maintaining formation and marching “as one fucking unit”. (See also the above section for a more thorough analysis of the Proud Boys' actual plan for January 6.) But by the morning of January 5th, Tarrio's original plan to split up into smaller teams and field test the MOSD chapter had apparently fallen apart. There was significant confusion among senior MOSD leadership over the issue of breaking up into teams (Govt Exhibit 509-15). Joe Biggs seemed to have no clue what was going on in terms of breaking up into teams, while Johnny Blackbeard lamented that “our plan has totally broken down”. Yet Jeremy Bertino dismissed the idea of teams entirely and confusingly asserted that everything should continue “as planned”, but did not elaborate any further on exactly what this entailed: Clearly, the revised plan for Jan 6 was not entirely clear even to senior leaders like Joe Biggs on the day before the big event. It's also worth noting that after dismissing the idea of smaller teams, Jeremy Bertino said that everything should “move forward as planned for the rally tomorrow”. It's a subtle point, but Jeremy Bertino explicitly refers to the Jan 6 plans as plans “for the rally tomorrow”, which really isn't the sort of phrasing I would expect intuitively if Jeremy Bertino was actually referring to some secret plan to storm the Capitol here. Rather, the phrasing suggests that Jeremy Bertino thinks of the Jan 6 plan as a plan for a rally, rather than a plan for some kind of illegal, covert operation to overtake the US Capitol building. Regardless, the confusion over plans continued through January 5th and into January 6th itself. On the night of January 4th, senior MOSD leader Ethan Nordean (Rufio) was apparently put in charge of the Jan 6 operation (Govt Exhibit 510-9). But then on the evening of January 5, the MOSD leaders had trouble even getting in touch with Ethan Nordean (Govt Exhibit 510-23) due to mobile service outages in DC. At one point, comments were made suggesting Enrique Tarrio would soon retake control of the operation: However, by the evening of January 5, it seems Ethan Nordean was still leading the operation despite the fact that the other Proud Boys couldn't even get in touch with him, and senior MOSD leaders were still asking for basic details about “the plan”: At around 9:22 PM on the evening of Jan 5, Joe Biggs posted a message in the New MOSD Telegram group, informing the other MOSD leaders that “we have a plan. I'm with rufio” (Govt Exhibit 509-23). It seems Joe Biggs or Ethan Nordean (Rufio) came up with some revised plan or sketch of a revised plan, but no specific details were provided over Telegram except the location of the initial morning meetup. It's possible the initial meeting place was the extent of Biggs' “plan” at the time. Whatever the case may be, it seems that Joe Biggs came up with this plan with little or no input from Enrique Tarrio, because after Biggs mentioned the plan and initial meetup location, Jeremy Bertino warned “If Enrique has a better idea he needs to say it soon.” At this point, on the evening of January 5, Enrique Tarrio was hanging out in a hotel in Baltimore after he was arrested in D.C. on January 4th and ordered by a judge to leave DC immediately. Tarrio joined the New MOSD Telegram group at 9:20 PM on January 5th at the invitation of Jeremy Bertino, but Tarrio didn't participate in any discussions included in the Telegram exhibits. Regardless, on the evening of January 5th, a mere twelve hours before the big event, Enrique Tarrio and Ethan Nordean were mostly “missing in action” and senior MOSD leaders were still asking basic questions about the “plan”, which at this point seemed to consist solely of an initial meetup location: Yet no specific details about this plan are ever mentioned, apart from the initial meetup time and location (the Washington Monument at 10 AM). Indeed, even on the day of January 6, less than two hours before the Capitol riot began, a senior MOSD leader was still asking basic questions about the “plan” (Govt Exhibit 509-29): Less than an hour before the Capitol riot began, some of the rank-and-file Proud Boys began complaining about a general lack of planning and leadership (Govt Exhibit 510-32). Lacking direction from their leaders, some groups of Proud Boys went off on their own to march around DC autonomously. In an attempt to improve morale and offer some leadership, Johnny Blackbeard posted relatively long voice messages in New MOSD (Govt Exhibit 509-30) and MOSD MAIN 2 (Govt Exhibit 510-31), telling the other Proud Boys “…don’t anybody lose hope”. Johnny Blackbeard lamented the numerous difficulties that adversely impacted the planning for Jan 6, such as Enrique Tarrio's arrest, and promised to conduct an “after action report session” to talk about what went wrong and “make adjustments for the next time.” Johnny Blackbeard reassured the Proud Boys that “this is gonna be an iterative thing” that would improve over time, and finished his voice message by telling everyone to “do your best, have a good time.” Johnny Blackbeard's speech here sounds more like a high-school football coach trying to encourage an under-performing team than it sounds like someone preparing to help orchestrate a full-frontal assault on the US Capitol followed by an intense, potentially life-altering siege and occupation. At the very least, Johnny Blackbeard's messages do not reflect the mindset of someone expecting an historic, large-scale riot to erupt in the next 40 minutes. Indeed, Johnny Blackbeard's assurance that things would improve over time (“this is gonna be an iterative thing”) is consistent with Zach Rehl's statements during the December 30 MOSD video conference about the role of the MOSD chapter and how it will hopefully lead to iterative improvements over time: In conclusion, the indictment selectively quotes Telegram messages to suggest the Proud Boys had a secret, detailed plan to storm the Capitol, devised in advance of Jan 6. But there is simply no evidence that any such plan existed. The Telegram evidence shows that the MOSD leadership came up with some kind of revised plan or itinerary for January 6 (likely similar to the itinerary for the previous D.C. rally on December 12, 2020), but it was seemingly devised at the last minute under confusing circumstances, and it was communicated very poorly to the other MOSD Proud Boys. Fortunately, it's fairly easy to deduce the Proud Boys' revised plans for January 6th, since we know exactly what the MOSD Proud Boys were up to during the morning of January 6th. Documentary filmmaker Eddie Block followed the Proud Boys around the streets of DC throughout the morning of January 6th, filming their march in an uninterrupted livestream right up until the Capitol riot broke out in the early afternoon. Eddie Block's video shows us that the Proud Boys mostly just marched around the streets of DC looking for Antifa and chanting “Fuck Antifa!”. The Proud Boys took group photos and mingled with ordinary Trump supporters attending the rally, then hung around by the food trucks lining Constitution Ave. Eventually, when large crowds of Trump supporters started gathering by the Capitol, the Proud Boys followed the crowds. The obvious confusion among MOSD leadership concerning the plan for Jan 6, along with Eddie Block's livestream video, strongly suggests that no secret conspiracy to storm the Capitol ever existed. With no secret conspiracy, the Proud Boys would have expected the Jan 6 rally to play out similarly to earlier rallies, where the primary activity was a public march and the primary threat was Antifa counter-protesters. This is consistent with the behavior of the Proud Boys as seen throughout the livestream on the morning of January 6th, before the Capitol riot began. |
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Indictment reads:
62. At 9:09 p.m., PERSON-2 broadcast a message to New MOSD Leaders Group that
read: “Stand by for the shared baofeng channel and shared zello channel, no Colors, be
decentralized and use good judgement until further orders.” PERSON-2 then stated, “Rufio
[NORDEAN] is in charge, cops are the primary threat, don't get caught by them or BLM, don't get
drunk until off the street.” PERSON-2 then provided a specific radio frequency of 477.985.
Full context from
New MOSD Telegram group chat (Government Exhibit 509-23):
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Included in the indictment to highlight how the Proud Boys used communication equipment (Baofeng hand-held radios)
to coordinate with each other on Jan 6. Once again, the prosecution relies on natural confirmation bias to
lead the reader to interpret any hints of planning or coordination among the Proud Boys, including the use of
hand-held radios, as evidence specifically of a seditious conspiracy to storm the Capitol.
Of course, the Proud Boys often used radios and other communication equipment at rallies, and the use
of such equipment alone is certainly insufficient to demonstrate the existence of a secret plan to storm the Capitol.
The Proud Boys used two-way radios on January 6 specifically because they
anticipated unreliable reception in DC
during the rally.
Of much greater significance here is the inclusion of Aaron Wolkind's instructive warning that "cops are the primary threat, don't get caught by them or BLM". This was included in the indictment because the prosecution claimed that the Proud Boys became antagonistic towards the police because the Proud Boys were planning to attack the Capitol, which necessarily would entail attacking the police who defend the Capitol. Indeed, the prosecution argued that any evidence of anti-police sentiment from the Proud Boys is also evidence that the Proud Boys planned in advance to attack police on Jan 6 as part of the plan to storm the Capitol. A Government Sentencing Memorandum submitted by the prosecution reads:
Sentencing memorandum reads:
However, this ignores a great deal of historical context that explains the Proud Boys' antagonism towards the cops,
apart from any secret plans to attack the Capitol. (See the above discussion analyzing the Proud Boys' evolving attitude towards the cops.)
Historically, the Proud Boys were generally
supportive of the police, especially before December of 2020. On December 12, 2020, during the second "Million MAGA
March" rally in DC, four Proud Boys (including Jeremy Bertino)
got
stabbed during an
altercation
with a counter-protester
whom the Proud Boys believed
to be affiliated with a local Antifa group.
During the same rally, Enrique Tarrio decided to steal a Black Lives Matter banner
hanging outside Asbury United Methodist Church, and
burn it publicly on the street (or at least, take credit for burning it). The incident was framed as
a hate crime by some media outlets, despite the fact that Tarrio himself is black.
As laid bare by the defendants’ own words before and on January 6, the defendants’
preparation for conflict was not focused on Antifa — it was the preparation for conflict with law
enforcement and government officials who they had declared traitors. See, e.g., Ex. 603-33 (Biggs
post about “treat[ing] your think [sic] blue line like we do antifa”); Ex. 501-50 (conspirators
discussing police: “#fucktheblue” … [T]hey chose their fucking side so let’s get this done.”).
Finally, as the Proud Boys navigated the streets of DC during the night of December 12, 2020, they were often intercepted by police officers on bikes tasked with keeping counter-protesters separated from the Proud Boys. When certain counter protesters retreated behind police lines, some Proud Boys became frustrated and resentful of what they perceived as a police effort to protect Antifa. The cumulative effect of all this was that some Proud Boy leaders felt betrayed by the police (or at least the DC police): The prosecution argued that the Proud Boys turned against the police because the Proud Boys planned to attack the Capitol and therefore necessarily had to attack the police who defend it. But the historical context involving the December 12th rally independently explains why the Proud Boys turned against the police. We know exactly why the Proud Boys turned against the cops, and it had nothing to do with January 6. The Proud Boys' antagonism towards the police was directly connected to the Proud Boys' antagonism towards Antifa (hence the derisive portmanteau “coptifa”) because the Proud Boys believed the DC cops sided with Antifa on December 12, 2020. Finally, even without any knowledge of this historical context, Aaron Wolkind's message, quoted in the indictment, doesn't actually support the prosecution's case. Wolkind said: “cops are the primary threat, don't get caught by them or BLM, don't get drunk until off the street.” If we assume, as the prosecution does, that Aaron Wolkind had in mind a secret plan to storm the Capitol when he told the Proud Boys that “cops are the primary threat”, we have to wonder what exactly Wolkind even meant when he added “don't get drunk until off the street”. If Wolkind's warning about cops as “the primary threat” is to be interpreted as applying to a secret plan to attack the Capitol (wherein the Capitol Police would be the primary threat), then “don't get drunk until off the street” must also apply to attacking the Capitol. But what would that even mean in such a context? Was Aaron Wolkind telling the Proud Boys to wait until they're inside the Capitol building to get drunk? Clearly, Aaron Wolkind's message here makes little sense within the context of some secret plan to attack the US Capitol building. But the warning to avoid getting drunk “until off the street” makes perfect sense if we assume that Aaron Wolkind's entire message (including his warning about the cops) had absolutely nothing to do with any secret plan to storm the Capitol. Rather, Aaron Wolkind's orders likely applied to the night of January 5th (not the Jan 6 rally) when some Proud Boys likely conducted a nighttime exercise or march through the streets of DC. (The relevant Telegram posts here are dated to January 5th at around 9:10 PM). Moreover, the no drinking “until off the street” rule is consistent with Charles Donohoe's statements during the MOSD video conference on December 30, 2020, warning the MOSD Proud Boys not to get drunk during marches or rallies, along with Enrique Tarrio's statement in MOSD MAIN that the MOSD chapter would be running a “training exercise” during “the 5th at night and 6th throughout the day”. |
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Indictment reads:
63. At 9:17 p.m., BIGGS posted a message on the New MOSD Leaders Group that
read, “We just had a meeting woth a lot of guys. Info should be coming out” and then posted “Just
spoke with Enrique.”
Full context from
New MOSD Telegram group chat (Government Exhibit 509-23):
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Included in the indictment because it establishes that the Proud Boys were meeting amongst themselves,
and Joe Biggs communicated with Enrique Tarrio, suggesting they conspired and
planned together, ironing out all the seditious details of their secret plan to attack the US Capitol
building. This is another example of the prosecution's fallacious assumption that
any evidence of planning in general among the Proud Boys is also specifically evidence
of a pre-planned seditious conspiracy to storm the US Capitol.
The indictment quotes selectively from the Telegram exhibits to suggest the Proud Boys had some clear, detailed plan to attack the Capitol building, conceived in advance of Jan 6 and perhaps discussed at length during Joe Biggs' secret meeting “woth [sic] a lot of guys”. But the Telegram evidence demonstrates conclusively that the Proud Boys' original plan for January 6th — which, as Enrique Tarrio clearly explained during the MOSD video conference, was nothing more than a “training exercise” to field test a march under the new MOSD command structure with the goal of remaining in formation “as one fucking unit” — was significantly disrupted after Tarrio was arrested (for an unrelated crime) on January 4th, 2021. And while the MOSD leadership came up with some sort of revised plan or itinerary (likely very similar to the itinerary for the previous D.C. rally on December 12, 2020) after Tarrio's arrest, this revised plan (A) was seemingly created at the last minute under confusing circumstances, (B) was communicated very poorly to the other MOSD Proud Boys, and (C) almost certainly had nothing to do with storming any Capitols. See the above analysis of paragraph 60 of the indictment, pertaining to the Proud Boys' mysterious "plan" for January 6, as well as the above section going over the evidence for Enrique Tarrio's original plan for the Jan 6 rally. |
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Indictment reads:
65. At approximately 9:20 p.m., BIGGS posted a message on the New MOSD Leaders
Group that read, “We have a plan. I'm with rufio [NORDEAN].” Donohoe responded, “What's
the plan so I can pass it to the MOSD guys.” BIGGS responded, “I gave Enrique a plan. The one
I told the guys and he said he had one.”
Full context from
New MOSD Telegram group chat (Government Exhibit 509-23):
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Included in the indictment because it establishes that the Proud Boys had some sort of plan on January 6th, and that
this was at least partially devised by Joe Biggs, Ethan Nordean (Rufio), and Enrique Tarrio, and passed along to the other
MOSD leaders. Once again, the prosecution assumes fallaciously that
any evidence of planning in general among the Proud Boys is also specifically evidence
of a pre-planned seditious conspiracy to storm the US Capitol.
The indictment quotes selectively from the Telegram exhibits to suggest the Proud Boys had some clear, detailed plan to attack the Capitol building, conceived in advance of Jan 6, even though the Telegram evidence clearly demonstrates that on the evening before January 6th the MOSD leadership was still scrambling to come up with a plan at the last minute. Indeed, the Telegram evidence demonstrates conclusively that the Proud Boys' original plan for January 6th — which, as Enrique Tarrio clearly explained during the MOSD video conference, was nothing more than a “training exercise” to field test a march under the new MOSD command structure with the goal of remaining in formation “as one fucking unit” — was significantly disrupted after Tarrio was arrested (for an unrelated crime) on January 4th, 2021. And while the MOSD leadership came up with some sort of revised plan or itinerary (likely very similar to the itinerary for the previous D.C. rally on December 12, 2020) after Tarrio's arrest, this revised plan (A) was seemingly created at the last minute under confusing circumstances, (B) was communicated very poorly to the other MOSD Proud Boys, and (C) almost certainly had nothing to do with storming any Capitols. See the above analysis of paragraph 60 of the indictment, pertaining to the Proud Boys' mysterious "plan" for January 6, as well as the above section going over the evidence for Enrique Tarrio's original plan for the Jan 6 rally. |
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U.S. v. Charles Donohoe 21-CR-175-4 (TJK), Detention Hearing Exhibit reads as follows:
Telegram Messages
Morning of January 6 (7:18 a.m. – 7:26 a.m.)
Full context from
New MOSD Telegram group chat (Government Exhibit 509-26):
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This was not included in the indictment, but appeared in a
Government Exhibit for
a detention hearing for Proud Boy Charles Donohoe (YutYut Cowabunga on Telegram),
a second-tier MOSD leader.
The exhibit presents a Telegram conversation held on the morning of January 6, 2021, in the New MOSD group chat, between Charles Donohoe, Aaron Wolkind, Jeremy Bertino, and John Charles Stewart (Johnny Blackbeard). Only Charles Donohoe is identified by name in the actual government exhibit. The reason for the inclusion of this conversation in the detention hearing exhibit is obvious: it captures the Proud Boys saying some insane shit, beginning with Aaron Wolkind's desire to see “thousands of normies burn [Washington DC] to ash today”. Jeremy Bertino chimes in, agreeing that such a thing “would be epic”. Then John Charles Stewart (Johnny Blackbeard) takes the conversation in a new direction by expressing his animosity towards the police, saying he would settle for watching the normies (meaning ordinary Trump supporters) “smash some pigs to dust” (i.e. attack the cops) on January 6. Johnny Blackbeard then assures the other Proud Boys that the normies are likely to attack the police, because normies have no “adrenaline control”. Finally, Johnny Blackbeard expresses resentment over Enrique Tarrio's arrest back on January 4 (for burning a Black Lives Matter banner owned by a church during the previous MAGA rally back in December), believing that the DC police “went too far when [they] arrested [Enrique] as a scare tactic”. This exhibit exemplifies the Proud Boys' violent rhetoric, and probably didn't help their chances at trial either. The prosecution framed these Telegram posts as evidence of the Proud Boys' secret plot to “rile up a mob of normies”, overwhelm the police, and storm the Capitol. After all, Johnny Blackbeard's comments somewhat telegraph all that, as he fantasizes about “thousands of normies” smashing the “pigs to dust”, then more or less prophesies that exactly such a thing is likely to happen on January 6th because the “normiecons” (normal conservatives) have no “adrenaline control”. However, the Proud Boys' fondness for violent rhetoric is not evidence of a seditious conspiracy. So we're left with their animosity towards the cops and their violent fantasies about a horde of "normies" attacking the cops. The prosecution framed evidence of the Proud Boys' animosity towards police as evidence of a pre-planned seditious conspiracy to attack police and storm the US Capitol. However, the Proud Boys were historically quite supportive of the police. Their animosity towards the police developed mostly in December of 2020 after some disastrous experiences at the second “Million MAGA March” rally in DC, and had nothing to do with January 6 or any conspiracy to storm the Capitol. (See the discussion above analyzing the Proud Boys' evolving relationship with the cops.) What about Johnny Blackbeard's “prophecy” about normies with no adrenaline control attacking the police? Well, it turns out Johnny Blackbeard was not actually telegraphing the events of January 6. Rather, his imagination turned to the idea of “normies attacking police” because Johnny Blackbeard had recently personally witnessed a crowd of regular Trump supporters nearly attack the police during the earlier DC rally on December 12, 2020. During a private Telegram conversation in the MOSD group chat (see Govt Exhibit 501-40) back on December 30, 2020, the Proud Boys were discussing the possibility that Enrique Tarrio would be arrested at the hands of the DC Metro police (for burning a Black Lives Matter banner belonging to a church back on December 12, 2020) — a discussion which had nothing to do with Jan 6 or the Capitol building. Both Jeremy Bertino and Johnny Blackbeard brought up concerns about the possibility of normies flipping out and attacking police if Enrique Tarrio were to be arrested in public near a crowd of "normie" Trump supporters: Clearly, the idea of “normies attacking cops” came up among the Proud Boys because the Proud Boys actually witnessed it almost happen on December 12, 2020. Thus, merely discussing the idea of “normies attacking police” is not evidence in itself that the Proud Boys were actually counting on normies attacking the police as an integral component of a secret seditious conspiracy to storm the Capitol on Jan 6. It's worth noting that in the 12/30/2020 discussion quoted above, Johnny Blackbeard brought up the possibility of “normies attacking police” as a concern — not something he necessarily hoped would happen or outright planned to make happen. It's also worth noting that when Johnny Blackbeard brought up a similar concern about the possibility of rank-and-file Proud Boys attacking cops, Enrique Tarrio dismissed the idea as unlikely, saying “They’re not gonna punch cops” (see Govt Exhibit 501-40). Again, this discussion happened only a week before Jan 6. Yet the prosecution claimed the Proud Boys leadership was expressly relying on rank-and-file Proud Boys (as well as normies) to “punch cops” as a key component of their secret seditious conspiracy to storm the Capitol. Of course, on the day of Jan 6, the discussion in the New MOSD chat group (Govt Exhibit 509-26), quoted above in the left column, clearly shows Johnny Blackbeard venting his anger at the cops and fantasizing about normies attacking police. But as an evidentiary exhibit designed to showcase the Proud Boys' violent rhetoric, the conversation between Charles Donohoe and the other Proud Boys quoted in the Detention Hearing Exhibit (quoted above in the left column) is probably one of the worst possible examples the prosecution could have used to make their point. The exhibit itself hides the names of everyone involved except for Charles Donohoe, but the actual Telegram chat exhibit reveals the Proud Boys who said these things: Aaron Wolkind, Jeremy Bertino (Noble Beard), and John Charles Stewart (Johnny Blackbeard). As it turns out, none of these guys were even in Washington DC on January 6th, 2021. The only person in the quoted discussion who was actually on the ground in DC on Jan 6 and actually participated in the Capitol riot was Charles Donohoe (YutYut Cowabunga), and he never said anything about “normies attacking police”. In fact, Charles Donohoe didn't even participate in the discussion about “normies” at all. Of course, in a seditious conspiracy trial like this, it isn't necessary to prove that the conspirators physically attacked the Capitol themselves, only that they helped to plan such an attack. But no evidence of any such plan exists, unless you count exhibits like this where the Proud Boys privately vent their anger towards the cops or the election. Moreover, the fact that none of the people venting their violent fantasies about “normies attacking cops” were even present in DC on Jan 6 certainly at least significantly weakens the impact of this exhibit. Moreover, the exhibit itself is not evidence of a plan to storm the Capitol. It actually has nothing to do with the Capitol or at all. It's merely evidence of the fact that some Proud Boys were angry at the police. And as demonstrated above, the Proud Boys' anger towards the cops had nothing to do with any secret plan to storm the Capitol and everything to do with their experience at the previous DC rally in December, along with the fact that the DC police arrested Enrique Tarrio (for an unrelated crime) on January 4th. |
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From
MOSD MAIN 2 Telegram group chat (Government Exhibit 510-33):
|
This was not included in the indictment despite being obviously beneficial for the prosecution. This
Telegram post, and other similar posts,
were most likely not included in the indictment because the
Proud Boys who posted them were not present in DC on Jan 6 (they were monitoring the situation from home on Telegram) and were not
charged as one of the main conspirators in the indictment. I've included this Telegram post here in this
document simply to remind the reader that the Proud Boys trial
was not about physically storming the Capitol, rather it was about planning and conspiring in advance of January 6
to storm the Capitol. There is no
doubt that some Proud Boys participated in the Jan 6 Capitol riot and that many Proud Boy leaders,
including Jeremy Bertino and Enrique Tarrio, celebrated the events of Jan 6 after
the mob of Trump supporters breached through barricades and stormed the Capitol building.
Indeed, Enrique Tarrio didn't even hide the fact that he approved of the pro-Trump mob storming the Capitol. He posted publicly on Parler to encourage the rioters and to tell them not to leave the Capitol building. Moreover, upper-tier MOSD leaders like Jeremy Bertino posted blatantly incriminating things — like “Storming the capital right now!!” — in the private Telegram group chats. Clearly, the MOSD Proud Boys weren't too careful about what they posted on Telegram, despite occasionally paying lip service to OPSEC practices. Yet among thousands of private Telegram posts there was not a single post demonstrating that the Capitol riot was planned in advance. Furthermore, the Telegram evidence provides many exculpatory insights. For example, Telegram posts allow us to determine the location of various groups of Proud Boys at the moment the Capitol riot began. The first barricade at the Peace Circle was breached by a group of rioters that included Proud Boys Joe Biggs and Ethan Nordean (Rufio) at around 12:52 PM on January 6. Then about 8 minutes later, at 1:00 PM, several exuberant Telegram posts appeared in the MOSD MAIN 2 (Govt Exhibit 510-33) and Boots on the Ground (Govt Exhibit 512-8) chat groups, exclaiming "Storming the capital [sic] building right now!!". The people who actually posted these "storming the Capitol!!" messages were Jeremy Bertino (Noble Beard) and Aaron Wolkind, neither of whom were actually on the ground in DC on January 6. These two were at home, egging on the other Proud Boys over Telegram:
Gilbert (AbolishTheDemocRats):
Shortly after the
first barricade at the Peace Circle was breached, Joseph Biggs
and Ethan Nordean were near the Peace Circle and among the first wave of rioters who breached
the barricade. This supports the prosecution's conspiracy case. But other MOSD Proud Boys,
such as Matthew “The People's Chairman” Walter, had to be told to head towards the Capitol
after the mob began storming it. And another MOSD Proud Boy using the Telegram handle
“Captain” was all the way over by the White
House,
over two miles from the Capitol building, when the riot started.
(38.889802, -77.011015)
[coordinates location:] 
Recall that the prosecution argued that the MOSD Proud Boys began planning to storm the Capitol as early as December 19th, 2020. If the Proud Boys had a plan to storm the Capitol, devised well in advance of January 6, why weren't they all positioned close to the Capitol building when the riot started? Of course, some high-ranking Proud Boys, like Joseph Biggs and Ethan Nordean, were near the Capitol building (by the Peace Circle) when the first barricade was breached. While this fact certainly helped the prosecution, the location of Biggs and Nordean by the Capitol building is easy to explain, whether or not any secret conspiracy to attack the Capitol building ever existed. Firstly, many of the official events for the Jan 6 rally were located near the Capitol building, and earlier in the day the Proud Boys had marched across the Capitol grounds to mingle with ordinary Trump supporters attending these events. Secondly, many ordinary Trump supporters began walking towards the Capitol building during President Trump's speech at the Ellipse, and the Proud Boys simply marched along with this crowd, just like they have always done at major rallies. Thus, while the existence of a secret, pre-planned conspiracy to storm the Capitol can explain the locations of Biggs and Nordean when the riot began, such a conspiracy can't account for the fact that at the moment the Capitol riot began, groups of MOSD Proud Boys were dispersed across various locations relatively far (in terms of walking distance) from the Capitol building. But if we instead assume there never was any conspiracy, it's easy to explain why many Proud Boys were off marching elsewhere when the riot began. Moreover, the hypothesis that no formal plan to storm the Capitol ever existed is already strongly supported by a large body of exculpatory Telegram evidence. For example, on the morning of January 6, less than two hours before the mob breached the outer barricades and stormed the Capitol, many senior Proud Boy leaders were still asking basic questions about the "plan" (see Govt Exhibit 509-29), or complaining about the lack of any clear plan or leadership: On the morning of January 6, less than an hour before the riot started, another Proud Boy (using the Telegram handle “Do you want total war?”) complained that the plan for Jan 6 was, if anything, the same plan the Proud Boys had used back on December 12, 2020, during the second “Million MAGA March” rally in DC. In other words, the plan was a typical itinerary for a typical Proud Boy march around DC, not some seditious conspiracy to storm the Capitol building. And when one Proud Boy leader said he was off “eating and chilling” with his own chapter, Jeremy Bertino — one of the senior MOSD leaders — didn't respond by saying something like “Get your ass over to the Capitol building ASAP like we planned!!”. Instead, Jeremy Bertino responded casually by asking: “[So you're] not watching Trump?” Thus, the Telegram evidence makes it abundantly clear that on the morning of January 6, the Proud Boys had no concept of any formal plan to storm the Capitol. Rather, different groups of MOSD-affiliated Proud Boys were spread around DC marching autonomously with little centralized leadership. One group was still over by the White House 30 minutes after the mob began storming the Capitol building. Other Proud Boys were off marching elsewhere, and only approached the Capitol after the riot was already in progress. On the morning of January 6, before the riot began, a group of Proud Boys led by Ethan Nordean and Joe Biggs marched around the streets of DC, chanting slogans and looking for Antifa. This early morning march was comprehensively captured on video by documentary filmmaker Eddie Block in an unedited one hour and 40 minute livestream. Eddie Block followed the Proud Boys around the streets of DC in his motorized wheelchair, filming everything they did right up until the Capitol riot began. Occasionally, individual Proud Boys would stop to help carry Eddie over obstacles or down concrete steps. As a valuable source of exculpatory evidence, Eddie Block's livestream brings into focus a recurring theme with the prosecution's seditious conspiracy case: the prosecution often tried to frame standard or routine things the Proud Boys regularly did at rallies as suspicious behavior indicative of a secret plot to storm the Capitol. This worked out pretty well for the prosecution, since the average person (and average jury member) has no idea what the Proud Boys actually do at a typical rally. The jury needed to first be taught what was expected to happen at a typical Proud Boy rally before being asked to assess what happened on January 6. Watching Eddie Block's livestream, we see the Proud Boys marching around the streets of DC chanting slogans, taking group photos, mingling with ordinary Trump supporters, and hanging around chatting and eating lunch by the food trucks on Constitution Avenue. While the Proud Boys understood January 6 to be a bit different from previous rallies (mostly because of the new MOSD structure), it's clear that much of what the Proud Boys are seen doing throughout Eddie Block's livestream matches what we know of the Proud Boys' itinerary for a previous rally in DC in December of 2020, including Enrique Tarrio's mandate to “[W]in hearts and minds. Shake hands kiss babies. Let the people know who the Proud Boys are” and to “recruit patriots to join as we enjoy a march through the streets of DC”. This sort of concern with “public relations” and promoting the Proud Boy “brand” is clearly evident in Eddie Block's Jan 6 livestream, as the Proud Boys waved and signaled to their fans on the sidelines. It's also consistent with the fact that half of the MOSD chapter's upper-tier leadership was part of “Marketing”. On the morning of January 6, the Proud Boys seemed focused mostly on finding local Antifa, their long-time street rivals. As the Proud Boys marched down Constitution Ave NW, they often chanted “Fuck Antifa!” and “Whose streets? Our streets!”, both typical chants often heard during Proud Boy marches. But the “Fuck Antifa” chant was the most common chant throughout the morning of Jan 6 (see, for example, timestamps 8:18, 12:53, 13:39, 21:38, 28:57, 33:50, 44:20, 48:25, 1:33:40, 1:35:00). Indeed, towards the end of Eddie Block's livestream, mere minutes before the first barricade was breached and the Capitol riot began, the Proud Boys were still marching down Constitution Ave chanting “Where's Antifa?”. Additionally, Eddie Block often made comments about Antifa as he livestreamed, such as “If you're Antifa and you're out there come find us! We're looking for you!” (timestamp 52:05) and “We're letting Antifa know we run this town!” (timestamp 45:11). While it's clear the Proud Boys were focused more on Antifa (who never showed up) than any imagined Capitol-related seditious conspiracy, the prosecution pointed out that both Joseph Biggs and Ethan Nordean were very close to the first barricade when it was breached by the mob at around 12:52 PM. Yet as we can see from the livestream, Biggs and Nordean simply followed the large crowd of Trump supporters to the Capitol building after President Trump's speech concluded, while still chanting “Where's Antifa?”. Shortly before the first barricade was breached, Joseph Biggs and Ethan Nordean were taking a break from the march, eating and socializing by a line of food trucks parked on Constitution Avenue, north of the Capitol building. The Proud Boys resumed their march at around the time the crowd started heading towards the Capitol building. Naturally, Biggs, Nordean, and their contingent of Proud Boys, decided to march alongside this crowd towards the Capitol (again while still chanting “Fuck Antifa!”). All of this — the marching alongside ordinary Trump supporters, the “Fuck Antifa!” chants — was typical behavior for the Proud Boys at a public MAGA rally like Jan 6. But there's no evidence any Proud Boy knew the pro-Trump mob was about to tear down barricades and storm the Capitol, and there wouldn't necessarily have been any cause for alarm (at least not at first) when the crowd started walking towards the Capitol building. Indeed, the National Park Service (the agency that issued all the permits for the official protest events held on January 6th) was actually expecting to see “large groups of unorganized individuals [traveling] between the Ellipse and the US Capitol throughout the day” (page 61 of PDF). It was completely expected that after President Trump finished speaking, portions of the crowd would head to the US Capitol building where they were expected to participate in official protest events, such as Ali Alexander's “One Nation Under God” rally at “Area 8” by the US Capitol, or the “Latinos for Trump” rally at “Area 7”. Obviously, all of these official events were moot once the mob began storming the Capitol at around 12:52 PM. Thus, Eddie Block's livestream from the morning of January 6th demonstrates fairly conclusively that the Proud Boys never had any secret plan to storm the Capitol devised in advance of Jan 6. Rather, the MOSD group of Proud Boys marched around the streets of DC like they typically do at rallies, and then after hanging around eating lunch and socializing by the food trucks on Constitution Avenue, the Proud Boys simply followed the crowd of Trump supporters walking from the Ellipse to the Capitol building shortly before the outer barricade was breached. Another video, filmed by independent journalist “WYSYWYG Tv”, captured what happened immediately after Eddie Block's livestream came to an end. When the MOSD Proud Boys arrived at the Peace Circle, a fairly large crowd of ordinary Trump supporters was already present, waving flags and chanting patriotic slogans. Notably, the Proud Boys were still chanting “Fuck Antifa!” as they arrived, less than 5 minutes before the Capitol riot began. Furthermore, the precise moment when the first barricade was breached (at 12:52 PM on January 6th, 2021) was thoroughly documented on video from multiple perspectives. These videos definitively prove that the Proud Boys were not among the frontline group of rioters that initiated the riot by toppling the outer barricade. Instead, the Proud Boys were standing much further back (still chanting about Antifa!) behind a dense crowd of ordinary Trump supporters standing between the Proud Boys and the police barricade. A group of ordinary Trump supporters — not Proud Boys — pushed against the barricade and knocked it over, opening the floodgates and initiating the Capitol riot. This frontline group of Trump supporters included a man named Ryan Samsel, who was later arrested and charged with assaulting a Capitol police officer. In a Government Sentencing Memo, the prosecution said of Ryan Samsel:
Sentencing memo reads:
Multiple videos clearly show that Ryan Samsel, along with three or four other ordinary
Trump supporters (none of whom were Proud Boys),
knocked over the outer barricade and initiated the riot while the Proud Boys were standing
much further back in the middle of the crowd.
Samsel was the first rioter to breach the restricted perimeter on January 6, 2021. He
unilaterally opened a section of fencing at the curb of the Peace Circle – the first barricade
separating crowds from the restricted U.S. Capitol grounds – and walked onto the restricted Capitol
grounds, paving the way for thousands of other rioters to follow him. Samsel then made his way
to a second barrier guarded by U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) officers. He verbally abused officers,
and then joined his co-defendant Stephen Randolph (Randolph) in forcibly pushing and pulling on
this second barrier – a linked metal, bike-rack barricade. Samsel then participated in the first
violent assault of officers defending the Capitol building that day.
Ryan Samsel can be seen standing right by the barricade, face to face with the cordon of Capitol police officers. Samsel wore a red MAGA baseball cap and a light blue jacket, but at timestamp 0:35 he removed the light blue jacket, revealing a black t-shirt worn over a long sleeve white shirt with a hood. Another video shows the same event from a different angle. Once again, we see that Samsel and a few other frontline rioters aggressively pushed and pulled the metal barricade until it toppled over: The moment the barricade toppled was also filmed from the opposite perspective, providing a closer view of the group of frontline rioters who toppled the barricade. Clearly, none of the Proud Boys were involved in toppling the barricade. Additionally, a video recovered from MOSD leader Zach Rehl's iPhone shows Zach Rehl's perspective when the first barricade was toppled. This video clearly demonstrates that Zach Rehl and the group of MOSD Proud Boys were standing much further back behind the crowd when the riot began. Thus, multiple videos shot from different angles demonstrate conclusively that none of the MOSD Proud Boys directly initiated the riot. Rather, they remained further back behind the crowd, still chanting about Antifa, when the riot began. Indeed, the behavior of the Proud Boys was mostly indistinguishable from the behavior of hundreds of ordinary Trump supporters in the crowd. The prosecution claimed that the Proud Boys had planned to incite a riot by “riling up the normies”. Perhaps Joe Biggs' proactive attempt to get the crowd going with a chant can be interpreted as evidence supporting the prosecution's theory. At least, Zach Rehl seemed to believe that a Proud Boy chant inadvertently excited the “normies” and catalyzed the riot. But Rehl's claim would be much more convincing if Joe Biggs wasn't still chanting about Antifa one minute before the riot began. Indeed, many of the ordinary Trump supporters were already chanting more appropriately patriotic slogans like “USA! USA!” even as Joe Biggs continued to obsess over Antifa.
One minute before the Capitol riot began, Joe Biggs and Zach Rehl led the crowd in chanting “Fuck Antifa!”, which
hardly seems like an appropriate chant if your goal is to incite the crowd to attack the cops and storm the Capitol.
Thus, the video evidence conclusively demonstrates that the Proud Boys took no clear, proactive measures to catalyze the riot or storm the Capitol, apart from trying to start a chant. Of course, the Proud Boys always chanted during rallies or marches, and there's no evidence this particular bout of chanting near the Peace Circle was specifically intended to incite a riot. Joe Biggs chanted about Antifa anyway, which hardly seems appropriate if Biggs truly was trying to incite the crowd to steamroll the police and storm the Capitol building. Abundant video evidence makes it very clear that the Proud Boys played no clearly discernible role in catalyzing the riot. Moreover, Ryan Samsel and the other frontline protesters who actually toppled the barricade and initiated the riot were ordinary Trump supporters, not Proud Boys. However, the prosecution attempted to strengthen the connection between these frontline rioters and the MOSD Proud Boys by highlighting one particularly odd moment that occurred one or two minutes before the riot began. Ryan Samsel walked up to Joe Biggs, briefly placed his arm around him, and said something in Biggs' ear: This brief interaction lasted no more than a few seconds. It's unknown what Ryan Samsel said to Joe Biggs, or how Samsel even knew Biggs. There's no evidence Samsel was ever a Proud Boy, and Samsel certainly never participated in any of the MOSD Telegram group chats. Nonetheless, the prosecution encouraged speculation that Joe Biggs may have instructed Ryan Samsel to topple the barricade (Govt Exhibit 1001). Samsel told the FBI that Joe Biggs indeed ordered him to topple the barricade, and that Biggs even threatened him by flashing a gun. However, there's no evidence to corroborate Samsel's claim. The prosecution conceded that Joe Biggs was not carrying a gun on January 6th, and the Judge instructed the jury that “no party contends there was a gun possessed by Biggs or any other defendant on 1/6.” Moreover, Ryan Samsel had an extensive criminal history involving assault and “terroristic threats”, and according to the prosecution, Samsel lied extensively to authorities and to the media about his actions on January 6th. Thus, any conclusions drawn from Ryan Samsel's brief interaction with Joe Biggs are entirely speculative, and there's no evidence that Joe Biggs told Ryan Samsel to do anything. The situation is further complicated by the fact that another man in a red cap, later identified as Ray Epps (not a Proud Boy), whispered something to Ryan Samsel a few seconds before Samsel toppled the barricade. Again, any conclusions drawn from this are purely speculative, and the most likely scenario is that Ryan Samsel simply acted on his own volition when he helped topple the barricade. In any case, Samsel's brief interaction with Joe Biggs can be explained by the fact that Samsel simply wanted to meet Biggs, because Biggs was a minor Internet celebrity within the MAGA movement who regularly appeared on InfoWars and co-hosted a podcast that attracted notable right-wingers like Alex Jones and Gavin McIness. In conclusion, the actions of the MOSD Proud Boys on January 6th before the riot began were documented extensively. Video evidence such as Eddie Block's livestream and footage of the initial breach all suggest that the Proud Boys viewed January 6th as a typical rally and never had any secret plan to storm the Capitol. The Capitol riot was initiated by ordinary Trump supporters, not Proud Boys, and the video evidence strongly suggests the riot occurred spontaneously without any pre-planning or conspiring in advance. |
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This was not included in the indictment, however I include it here because it's the only potentially
incriminating moment in an otherwise mostly exculpatory livestream video.
On the morning of January 6, before the Capitol riot began, a group of MOSD Proud Boys led by Ethan Nordean
and Joe Biggs marched around the streets of DC, chanting slogans and looking for Antifa.
This morning march was comprehensively
captured on video by documentary filmmaker Eddie Block in an unedited one hour and 40 minute livestream.
Eddie Block followed the Proud Boys around the streets of DC in
his motorized wheelchair, filming everything they did right up until the Capitol riot began. This livestream
is a significant source of exculpatory evidence, because it demonstrates fairly conclusively that
on the morning of January 6th, the Proud Boys behaved exactly like they always have at rallies — they marched
through the city streets, chanted slogans and searched for Antifa counter-protesters. Nothing in
the video explicitly supports the prosecution's claim that the Proud Boys had a secret plan to storm the Capitol, devised
well in advance of January 6th, 2021.
However, Eddie Block's Jan 6 livestream video is not entirely exculpatory — there is at least one ostensibly incriminating moment. At around timestamp 32:52 the MOSD Proud Boys are seen standing around west of the Capitol building, and one of them can be heard saying “let's take the fucking Capitol!”. This happened about an hour before the first barricade was breached and the Capitol riot began. During the intervening hour, the Proud Boys left the Capitol grounds, marched down Constitution Avenue, took a lunch break by the food trucks, and then followed a crowd of ordinary Trump supporters towards the east side of the Capitol building shortly before the riot began, all while frequently chanting “Fuck Antifa!”. The audio in the livestream is a bit difficult to make out, but the Proud Boy who said “let's take the fucking Capitol!” was Daniel Lyons Scott (a.k.a. Milkshake). Other Proud Boys immediately admonished Daniel Lyons Scott, with one saying “Let’s not fucking yell that, all right?” (timestamp 32:59). Ethan Nordean then muttered into his megaphone “It was Milkshake, man... you know, idiot” (timestamp 33:04). Obviously, the prosecution would argue that “Milkshake” spilled the beans in public about the secret plan to storm the Capitol, and was thus harshly silenced by his co-conspirators. The defense would argue that “Milkshake” was merely joking around, and that the other Proud Boys warned him not to joke publicly about things like that. This sort of evidence has to be assessed holistically and weighed against other exculpatory or incriminating evidence. Daniel Lyons Scott was a rank-and-file Proud Boy, not a MOSD leader involved in the planning for Jan 6. Moreover, as argued in the section above, the concept of “storming/taking/occupying the Capitol” was not some esoteric idea discussed only by the Proud Boys or applicable only to January 6th. The idea of “storming” or occupying Capitol buildings became part of the ethos of the online MAGA-sphere and the 2020 “Stop the Steal” movement after Trump lost the election. Between November of 2020 and January 5th, 2021, there were 468 Parler posts that exhorted Trump supporters to “storm the Capitol” (or some variation of that phrase), and around 3,450 Parler posts telling Trump supporters to occupy a Capitol building or something similar. In some cases, “storming the Capitol” didn't even necessarily refer to a violent or illegal act. For example, a conservative media outlet used the phrase “storming the Capitol” to describe a legal protest held inside the Georgia State Capitol building in November of 2020. Even documentary filmmaker Eddie Block, who livestreamed the Proud Boys marching on Jan 6, was initially rather tongue-in-cheek when he first saw the riotous mob descend upon the US Capitol building, exclaiming “Look at this folks! We're storming the Capitol!” (timestamp 1:38:43). But as Eddie Block drew closer to the melee, he soon realized that people were literally breaking down barricades and storming the Capitol building. Eddie then spoke with a tone of genuine surprise, saying “Oh shit! We're tearing it down!” (timestamp 1:39:03). Thus, it should be obvious that merely identifying an isolated, non-sequitor usage of the phrase “storm/take the Capitol” is not sufficient to prove the existence of a formal plan or conspiracy, devised in advance of January 6, to storm the US Capitol building. Moreover, this type of evidence must be weighed against other exculpatory evidence, such as Zach Rehl's statement (Govt Exhibit 512-13) posted in a private Telegram group chat in the late afternoon of January 6th after the Capitol riot was quelled: Zach Rehl, an upper-tier MOSD leader directly involved in planning Jan 6, outright said (in a private Telegram group chat he believed to be secure) that the events of Jan 6 were unexpected from his perspective (and thus obviously not planned in advance). |
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Indictment reads:
85. Shortly after 1:00 p.m., messages were posted by PERSON-1 and PERSON-2 in
the New MOSD Leaders Group that stated, “Push inside! Find some eggs and rotten tomatoes!”
and “They deploy the mace yet.” Donohoe posted, “We are trying.”
From
New MOSD Telegram group chat (Government Exhibit 509-32):
|
Included in the indictment because it demonstrates that some Proud Boys did, in fact, storm the Capitol. However,
this fact was never in dispute. Over a thousand people stormed the Capitol, and most were charged with misdemeanors
related to trespassing or picketing on US Capitol grounds. Just because the Proud Boys participated in the riot
does not mean they actually planned in advance of Jan 6 to orchestrate the riot, and Telegram
evidence suggests no such plan ever existed. For example, Proud Boy Zach Rehl, an upper-tier MOSD
leader directly involved in planning for Jan 6, outright stated (in a private Telegram group chat he believed to be secure)
that the Capitol riot was a completely unexpected
event from his perspective (Govt Exhibit 512-13):
Moreover, the indictment quotes these Telegram posts very deceptively, giving the impression that all three Proud Boys involved in the conversation (Aaron Wolkin, Jeremy Bertino and Charles Donohoe) were actually present in Washington DC during the Capitol riot, when in fact neither Aaron Wolkind nor Jeremy Bertino were even present in Washington DC on January 6th. Only Charles Donohoe actually participated in the Capitol riot. Also, highlighting a Telegram post where a Proud Boy (who wasn't even in DC on Jan 6) eagerly suggests throwing “eggs and rotten tomatoes” (presumably at the police), isn't exactly the most effective way to paint the Proud Boys as violent insurrectionists. They didn't even bring guns. |
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Indictment reads:
88. Shortly thereafter, Donohoe and PEZZOLA combined to carry the riot shield
through the west plaza. After reaching the rear of the concrete area of the west plaza, Donohoe
posted a message at 1:37 p.m. that read, “Got a riot shield.” While standing at the rear of the plaza,
Donohoe took a picture of PEZZOLA holding the riot shield and making a hand gesture associated
with the Proud Boys.
From
New MOSD Telegram group chat (Government Exhibit 509-33):
|
Included in the indictment because it emphasizes Dominic Pezzola's connection to Charles Donohoe.
Dominic Pezzola was one of the first rioters to breach the Capitol building when he used a stolen riot shield to
smash a window on the upper terrace. However, Dominic Pezzola (a.k.a “Spazzo - 2nd°” on Telegram) was a rank-and-file Proud Boy
who had little or no input in actually planning for Jan 6. Pezzola became a
Proud Boy less than two months before Jan 6 (see
trial testimony of Lisa Magee), and he joined the MOSD MAIN Telegram
chat group (see Government Exhibit 507-7) as late as January 2, 2021, only 4 days before Jan 6, and he rarely posted anything after joining.
However, Charles Donohoe (YutYut Cowabunga on Telegram) was a MOSD leader who helped organize the MOSD chapter (see the December 30, 2020 MOSD video conference and full transcript) and helped plan the itinerary for Jan 6. But since Dominic Pezzola was one of the first rioters to actually breach the Capitol building, the prosecution aggressively called attention to any evidence suggesting Pezzola had an established relationship with other, higher-ranking Proud Boys, like Charles Donohoe and Enrique Tarrio. The prosecution wanted the jury to conclude that Pezzola was a key conspirator who was methodically following orders from the MOSD leadership when he smashed the window, rather than just another random rioter engaging in ad hoc violence who happened to be among the first rioters to breach the Capitol building. The prosecution's suggestion that Pezzola smashed the upper terrace window pane as part of some elaborate plan, devised by the Proud Boys in advance of Jan 6, to storm the US Capitol building, is significantly weakened by the fact that Pezzola was merely one of several first-wave rioters on the upper terrace trying to force their way into the building. Pezzola was not even the first rioter to actually penetrate the glass (see video of Pezzola smashing the window pane) or enter the building, and the opening Pezzola created by smashing the window pane was not even the same opening used by the first rioter who entered the building. (See the above discussion about Dominic Pezzola and the unidentified rioter in red.) Dominic Pezzola was ultimately the only Proud Boy acquitted of the seditious conspiracy charge. |
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|
Indictment reads:
97. At 2:36 p.m., TARRIO made a public post on social media that read, “After I finish
watching this I'll make a statement about my arrest... But for now I'm enjoying the show...Do what
must be done. #WeThePeople.”
Full context from Parler:
Enrique Tarrio · @NobleLead
After I finish watching this I'll make a statement about my arrest...
But for now I'm enjoying the show... Do what must be done. #WeThePeople. 
|
Included in the indictment to demonstrate that Enrique Tarrio, who was arrested on January 4, 2021 for an unrelated crime, and thus not even present in DC on January 6, was nonetheless approvingly watching the action unfold from the comfort of his hotel room in Baltimore. There is no doubt that Enrique Tarrio enthusiastically supported the Jan 6 rioters after they began storming the Capitol building. However, this does not prove the existence of a plan or conspiracy, devised by the Proud Boys in advance of Jan 6, to orchestrate the riot and storm the US Capitol. Additionally, Enrique Tarrio posted this on Parler publicly for all the world to see. Tarrio was not even trying to hide his support for the Jan 6 rioters, and likely had no inkling that this Parler post would later be used against him as evidence of a pre-planned seditious conspiracy to storm the Capitol. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Indictment reads:
99. At 2:38 p.m., TARRIO made a public post on social media that read, “Don't
fucking leave.”
Full context from Parler:
|
Included in the indictment to demonstrate that Enrique Tarrio, who was
arrested on January 4, 2021
for an unrelated crime, and thus
not even present in DC on January 6,
nonetheless monitored the situation as the riot unfolded and even “ordered” the rioters not to leave the Capitol building.
Again, there is no doubt that Enrique Tarrio enthusiastically supported the Jan 6 rioters after they breached the Capitol building. However, once again, this does not prove the existence of a plan or conspiracy, devised by the Proud Boys in advance of Jan 6, to orchestrate the riot and storm the US Capitol. Moreover, Tarrio's Parler post telling the rioters “don't fucking leave” was posted publicly on Parler for the world to see. Enrique Tarrio was not even trying to hide his support for the Jan 6 rioters, and likely had no inkling that this Parler post would later be used against him as evidence of a pre-planned seditious conspiracy to storm the Capitol. |
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|
Indictment reads:
100. At approximately 2:39 p.m., TARRIO responded to a question posed by a Proud
Boys member — “Are we a militia yet?”— with a one word voice note in which TARRIO stated,
“Yep.” TARRIO then posted two additional messages that stated, “Make no mistake...” and then
“We did this...”
Full context from Skull And Bones Telegram group chat (Government Exhibit 500-84):
|
Included in the indictment to demonstrate that Enrique Tarrio, who was
not even present in DC on January 6,
nonetheless approvingly watched the action unfold while
communicating with other Proud Boys. This exchange on Telegram between Enrique Tarrio
and rank-and-file Proud Boy Chris Cannon was particularly helpful to the prosecution's
seditious conspiracy case.
Enrique Tarrio outright said “We did this...” in a private Telegram chat, seemingly admitting to playing some role in
causing or orchestrating the Jan 6 attack on the US Capitol building.
But the indictment omits some context that somewhat dilutes the impact of Tarrio's incriminating “confession”. This exchange between Enrique Tarrio and Chris Cannon began when Cannon messaged Tarrio (casually using a racial slur in accordance with the Proud Boys' 4chan-inspired group culture) saying “I told you we should have rushed the police on the 12th this could have been us”. Chris Cannon was referring to an earlier incident that occurred on December 12, 2020, during the second “Million MAGA March” rally in Washington DC. During this earlier rally, the Proud Boys were attempting to fight with local anti-fascist (Antifa) counter-protester groups, but were blocked by the police who were tasked with keeping the Proud Boys physically separated from Antifa in order to prevent the two groups from violently fighting each other in the streets of DC. Some Proud Boys interpreted this as a signal that the police were willfully protecting (or siding with) Antifa, causing some Proud Boy leaders to begin to distrust and resent the DC police. Chris Cannon tried to incite a group of Proud Boys to collectively rush a police defensive line in order to reach the group of counter-protesters (whom the Proud Boys believed were Antifa-affiliated) that had amassed behind the police line. Chris Cannon's message to Enrique Tarrio on January 6 — "I told you we should have rushed the police on the 12th this could have been us" — references this incident. Chris Cannon was a rank-and-file Proud Boy, not a leader. However, this incident was referenced by MOSD leaders Jeremy Bertino, Zach Rehl, and Charles Donohoe on December 30, 2020, in the MOSD Telegram group chat (Govt Exhibit 501-41): The same incident was referenced again by Jeremy Bertino in the MOSD group chat (Govt Exhibit 501-50) on January 1, 2021: It's worth pointing out that the above Telegram exchanges are yet more evidence that the Proud Boys were primarily concerned with fighting Antifa rather than attacking the police. Even the Proud Boys' increased animosity and violent rhetoric towards the police in December of 2020 was rooted in the ongoing Proud Boy conflict with Antifa (the Proud Boys believed that the DC cops sided with Antifa and Black Lives Matter on December 12, 2020 after a group of counter-protesters withdrew behind police lines) rather than some secret conspiracy to attack cops and storm the Capitol. (See also the Telegram post from Proud Boy “Deplorable51” on 12/23/2020 at 7:21:03 saying “antifuck is backed by dems police and fbi...”.) Yet despite the Proud Boys' growing animosity towards the cops, the above conversation makes it clear that, at least as of December 30th, 2020, the Proud Boys still didn't think attacking cops was a good idea. Proud Boy Twisted Zack claims he threatened to knock out a fellow Proud Boy who was attempting to incite others to attack the cops on December 12, 2020 during the MAGA rally in DC. Indeed, Enrique Tarrio himself was very concerned that aggressive behavior at national rallies could land the Proud Boys in serious trouble (see Govt Exhibit 500-69). That's the entire reason the “Ministry of Self Defense” (MOSD) chapter was created in the first place: And of course, during the MOSD video conference on December 30, 2020, Enrique Tarrio stressed that Proud Boys should never initiate conflicts or go on the offense, saying “I saw a lot of people going on the offense [on December 12th]. We’re not used to going on the offense — that’s why it’s called self-defense” (timestamp 7:53). Tarrio later added “we’re never gonna be the ones to cross the police barrier or cross something in order to get to somebody. We’re always going to be the one standing back, right? Um, and we’re always going to be the ones to fucking defend and we’ve been really good at it” (timestamp 33:29). Indeed, Tarrio forced every MOSD member to fill out an application form affirming agreement with the stipulation “I will always act in self defense and I will never initiate a confrontation”. Nevertheless, at face value, Enrique Tarrio's statement to Chris Cannon on January 6 that “Make no mistake... we did this” certainly seems incriminating. While it's not exactly a smoking gun for the prosecution, it is the sort of thing a jury is likely to find to be compelling evidence of advance planning for the Jan 6 attack. However, there was never any doubt that the Proud Boys “did this” (i.e. stormed the Capitol). They're on camera storming the Capitol. Moreover, Enrique Tarrio — the Proud Boys' chairman and leader — publicly encouraged the Jan 6 rioters on Parler while the Capitol riot was underway. But again, this doesn't mean the Proud Boys actually planned in advance to storm the Capitol. When Tarrio said “Make no mistake... we did this”, he may simply have been boasting that the Proud Boys participated in the Capitol riot, exaggerating the centrality of their role for the sake of a good boast. Regardless, Tarrio's statement is open to interpretation. It's a data point that could reasonably be interpreted as supportive of the prosecution's seditious conspiracy case, and therefore it must be weighed against all the exculpatory evidence suggesting no plan to storm the Capitol ever existed. Moreover, part of the Telegram conversation between Enrique Tarrio and Chris Cannon was omitted in the indictment. This additional context somewhat weakens the impact of “Make no mistake... we did this”. Neither Enrique Tarrio nor Chris Cannon were in Washington DC on January 6, but were watching from elsewhere as the Capitol riot unfolded. Their Telegram conversation began at 2:28 PM on January 6th, when Cannon said to Tarrio “hey i told you we should have rushed the police on the 12th this could have been us”. Again, Cannon was referring to an incident back on December 12th, 2020, when Cannon tried (unsuccessfully) to convince other Proud Boys to rush a cordon of police officers (Govt Exhibits 501-41 and 501-50) in order to reach a group of (possibly Antifa-affiliated) counter-protesters. On January 6, as Cannon watched hundreds of people breach through police defensive lines, he perhaps felt somewhat vindicated after taking flak from other Proud Boys for trying to rush a line of police back on December 12th, 2020. Now that “everyone was doing it”, Chris Cannon perhaps felt empowered to say to Tarrio the equivalent of something like “See! I told you that rushing the cops was a viable idea but you didn't listen! We could have done it back on December 12th!” This “I told you so” also implies that Chris Cannon didn't necessarily expect hundreds of people to storm the Capitol building on January 6th, and thus had no knowledge of any pre-planning to storm the Capitol. Of course, Chris Cannon was not a MOSD leader and was never charged with seditious conspiracy, so his ignorance of a plan doesn't necessarily hurt the prosecution's case. But Chris Cannon's statement that “this could have been us” implies he felt that the Proud Boys “missed out” on an opportunity back on December 12th when they refrained from rushing a police defensive line. Perhaps the implication is that Cannon believed the Proud Boys' unwillingness to escalate back on December 12th set a precedent which had now sidelined them, denying them a more central role in the (clearly historic) events that were unfolding on January 6th, 2021. Chris Cannon's rhetorical follow-up question “are we a militia yet?” is probably best interpreted to mean something along the lines of “so does THIS [ongoing storming of the Capitol] finally make us a proper militia?” Chris Cannon's question pushed back against the sentiment, occasionally expressed by Proud Boy leadership, that “We are not a fucking militia” (see Govt Exhibit 548-2). Cannon's question also suggests he knew that at least some Proud Boys participated in the Jan 6 riot. But Cannon's earlier statement that “hey i told you we should have rushed the police on the 12th this could have been us” implies he believed the Proud Boys (or perhaps just Tarrio and Cannon personally) somehow “missed out” (either on December 12th or January 6th or both) by remaining unwilling to escalate and rush the police back on December 12th. Regardless of the precise meaning of Chris Cannon's posts, Enrique Tarrio seems to have interpreted Cannon's statement to mean that the Proud Boys' unwillingess to escalate and rush the police back on December 12 set a precedent that (presumably) sidelined the Proud Boys on January 6 as the Capitol riot unfolded. Thus, Tarrio's reply to Chris Cannon (“Make no mistake... we did this”) should probably be interpreted to mean something along the lines of: “Actually no, we [the Proud Boys] did NOT get sidelined. In fact, we were prominently involved in storming the Capitol today [on Jan 6]).” This is less of a confession to conspiring in advance, and more of a boastful insistence (“make no mistake”) that the Proud Boys did, in fact, play a significant role in storming the Capitol on January 6th. But the fact that the Proud Boys participated in storming the Capitol was never in doubt and never denied by the defense. Like so much of the ostensibly incriminating evidence presented by the prosecution, Tarrio's statement merely demonstrates that the Proud Boys participated in and enthusiastically supported the Jan 6 attack, but does NOT demonstrate that they actually conspired in advance to orchestrate the attack. |
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|
Indictment reads:
103. At 2:41 p.m., TARRIO made a public post on social media that read, “Proud Of
My Boys and my country.”
Full context from Parler:
|
Included in the indictment to demonstrate that Enrique Tarrio, who was arrested on January 4, 2021 for an unrelated crime, and thus not even present in DC on January 6, nonetheless monitored the situation as the riot unfolded and enthusiastically supported the Jan 6 rioters. Moreover, his Parler post here is also an admission that the Proud Boys participated in the Capitol riot. Yet once again, Enrique Tarrio posted this publicly on Parler for the world to see. Tarrio was not even trying to hide his support for the Jan 6 rioters or to hide the fact that some Proud Boys participated in the riot. Tarrio likely had no inkling that this Parler post would later be used against him as evidence of a pre-planned seditious conspiracy to storm the Capitol. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Indictment reads:
106. At 2:57 p.m., TARRIO posted a message on social media that read, “1776” and
then “Revolutionaries are now at the Rayburn building,” which referred to a House of
Representatives office building that had been referenced in the “1776 Returns” plan received by
TARRIO on December 30, 2020.
Full context from Parler:
Enrique Tarrio · @NobleLead
1776.
Full context from Parler:
|
Included in the indictment to demonstrate that Enrique Tarrio, who was
arrested on January 4, 2021 for an unrelated crime
and therefore not even
present in DC on January 6, nonetheless conspired in advance of January 6 to orchestrate the attack on the US Capitol building.
These Parler posts, posted by Enrique Tarrio on the afternoon of January 6, also ostensibly support the prosecution's claim that Enrique Tarrio was influenced
by the mysterious “1776 Returns” document, which
outlines an elaborate plan to occupy various government buildings near the US Capitol. (See
above discussion on “1776 Returns”.)
The defense claimed that Tarrio likely never even read this document, which was sent to him by Eryka Gemma on Telegram on December 30, 2020.
But the prosecution pointed to Tarrio's Parler posts which seem to reference certain details mentioned in
“1776 Returns”, such as the Rayburn building
and the term “1776”.
The indictment implies that when Enrique Tarrio posted “1776” publicly on Parler on the afternoon of January 6
while the Capitol riot was in progress, he was referencing the
“1776 Returns” document.
While it's possible that Enrique Tarrio's Parler post was referencing “1776 Returns”, this is by no means obvious or even necessarily likely. Throughout 2020, the term “1776” (the year America gained independence) was a common refrain, hashtag and rallying cry within the online MAGA-sphere across social media and right-wing forums. 
Based on the Zenodo Parler database, there were at least 22,143 Parler posts in 2020 that incorporated the term “1776”. At least 160 of these posts consisted solely of the single term “1776”, just like Enrique Tarrio's post quoted in the indictment. Moreover, the #1776 hashtag was used at least 14,448 times on Parler in 2020, making it the 151st most popular hashtag that year (out of approximately 578,880 total hashtags). Indeed, Enrique Tarrio himself incorporated “1776” into at least 30 Parler posts in 2020. Most of these posts were promoting Tarrio's (now defunct) merchandise website at www.1776.shop. But several of Tarrio's Parler posts used “1776” as a rallying cry well before President Trump lost the election in November of 2020, and thus well before any motive existed for the Proud Boys to storm the Capitol: 
Indeed, Enrique Tarrio first posted “1776” on Parler on July 16, 2020, several months before Trump lost the 2020 election: 
Enrique Tarrio posted “1776” on Parler again on July 20th, July 21st, July 23rd, and August 11th in 2020, all several months before Trump lost the 2020 election in November, and thus before the Proud Boys had any motive to storm the Capitol. Therefore, the fact that Enrique Tarrio also posted “1776” on Parler on the afternoon of January 6, 2021, really doesn't demonstrate anything except for Tarrio's enthusiastic support of the Jan 6 rioters. The term “1776” was a common rallying cry among Trump supporters online, and thus the connection between Tarrio's “1776” Parler post and the "1776 Returns" document is quite tenuous. The indictment also mentions a separate Parler post from Enrique Tarrio saying “Revolutionaries are now at the Rayburn building” which Tarrio posted on the afternoon of January 6 during the Capitol riot. The Rayburn building is a House of Representatives office building about half a mile from the US Capitol building. The indictment points out that the Rayburn building was specifically mentioned in the “1776 Returns” document, suggesting that Tarrio read “1776 Returns” and used it as a playbook to orchestrate the Capitol riot on January 6. Regardless, no rioters or “revolutionaries” ever actually stormed the Rayburn building on Jan 6, so why did Tarrio falsely or mistakenly claim they did on Parler? Enrique Tarrio was not actually in Washington DC on January 6th, but he followed media coverage of the Capitol riot as it unfolded, posting on Parler throughout the afternoon of January 6th. In fact, about one minute before Tarrio posted that rioters were “at the Rayburn building”, he posted a photograph of one of the rioters inside the Senate chamber in the US Capitol building. Therefore, it seems likely that Tarrio knew the riot was happening exclusively at the Capitol building, and not at the Rayburn building. One possible explanation is that Tarrio was confused by tweets mentioning a lockdown in the Rayburn building. Alternatively, it's possible Tarrio was intentionally spreading misinformation publicly on Parler in order to mislead or confuse law enforcement and help out the rioters. It wouldn't be the first time that Tarrio used misinformation strategically in order to mislead an opponent. A week before January 6, Tarrio publicly announced on Parler that “the ProudBoys will turn out in record numbers on Jan 6th”. We know from the MOSD video conference at timestamp 9:37 that this was a strategic deception meant to make the Proud Boys “appear bigger than what we are”. Perhaps Tarrio's post about “revolutionaries” at the Rayburn building was a similar deception. The prosecution argued that Tarrio's mention of the Rayburn building is strong evidence that he used the “1776 Returns” document as a playbook to storm the Capitol on January 6. This argument implicitly relies on the assumption that Tarrio would not be likely to mention the Rayburn building unless he read “1776 Returns”. That is, the prosecution believes that the Rayburn building is relatively obscure and not part of the general background knowledge the average American is likely to possess. But Tarrio had regularly traveled to Washington DC for various rallies and political events throughout 2020, so it's not much of a stretch to imagine that Tarrio would be familiar with the Rayburn building whether or not he ever read “1776 Returns”. Indeed, in December of 2020, Trump supporters on Parler independently called for storming or occupying the Rayburn building and other Federal buildings, proving that the idea was not unique to “1776 Returns”. Regardless, in my opinion, it's likely that Tarrio did, in fact, read 1776 Returns. The document probably inspired Tarrio's use of melodramatic language like “revolutionaries” and “Winter Palace”, both of which are linguistic outliers in the online MAGA-sphere, where the patriotic, libertarian ethos of the American Revolution holds a lot more ideological sway than Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik revolutionaries. (However, Tarrio did call Eryka Gemma a “revolutionary” back in October of 2020, well before he encountered 1776 Returns, and Eryka Gemma herself used the word “revolutionary” during an interview in December of 2020.) But given the complete lack of any references to 1776 Returns or the plan outlined therein among all the MOSD Telegram groups and the MOSD video conference, and the fact that the actual events of January 6 were fundamentally different from the multi-building “sit-ins” described in 1776 Returns, Tarrio's mention of the Rayburn building doesn't prove anything beyond the fact that he may have read 1776 Returns at some point. Moreover, the idea of storming or occupying the Rayburn building isn't unique to 1776 Returns anyway. The same idea appeared independently at least twice on Parler in December of 2020. See also the above section analyzing “1776 Returns” in greater detail. |
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|
Indictment reads:
107. At 7:39 p.m., PERSON-1 sent two text messages to TARRIO that read, “Brother.
You know we made this happen[,]” and “I'm so proud of my country today.” TARRIO responded,
“I know.” At 7:44 p.m., the conversation continued, with PERSON-1 texting, “1776
motherfuckers.” TARRIO responded, “The Winter Palace.” PERSON-1 texted, “Dude. Did we
just influence history?” TARRIO responded, “Let's first see how this plays out.” PERSON-1
stated, “They HAVE to certify today! Or it's invalid.” These messages were exchanged before
the Senate returned to its chamber at approximately 8:00 p.m. to resume certifying the Electoral
College vote.
Full context from
recovered text messages between Enrique Tarrio and Jeremy Bertino (Government Exhibit 530-5):
|
Included in the indictment because it shows MOSD leader Jeremy Bertino saying to Enrique Tarrio
on the evening of January 6, “you know that we made this happen”. Tarrio replied “I know”. The prosecution argued that this
exchange is an admission that Tarrio conspired in advance to orchestrate the attack on the US Capitol building on Jan 6.
Additionally, Bertino says “1776 motherfucker” and Tarrio uses the phrase “The Winter Palace”, which the prosecution
presented as further evidence that Tarrio read the mysterious
“1776 Returns” document (which includes
the phrase “Winter Palace” drawn from the history of the Russian Revolution) and used this document as a playbook
for storming the Capitol on January 6.
As discussed above, the term “1776” (the year America gained independence) was a popular rallying cry and hashtag among the online MAGA-sphere, appearing in at least 22,143 Parler posts throughout 2020. The term “1776” was used by Enrique Tarrio himself on multiple occasions well before Trump lost the 2020 election, and thus well before the Proud Boys had any conceivable motivation to storm the Capitol building. Thus, any connection between the Proud Boys' use of the term “1776” on social media and the “1776 Returns” document is incredibly tenuous. The fact that some Proud Boys incorporated “1776” into their celebratory Parler posts on January 6 proves nothing other than the fact that they enthusiastically supported the Jan 6 rioters. While this Telegram exchange between Jeremy Bertino and Enrique Tarrio certainly proves that the MOSD leadership enthusiastically supported the Jan 6 rioters and the storming of the US Capitol building, this was never in doubt and the defense never argued otherwise. But again, this Telegram conversation does not prove that the Proud Boys actually planned in advance to storm the US Capitol building on January 6, and there is a large body of exculpatory evidence that strongly indicates no such plan ever existed. The prosecution would argue that Jeremy Bertino's statement “you know we made this happen” is evidence that the Proud Boys made plans in advance of Jan 6 to storm the US Capitol building. The defense would argue that this statement merely reflects Bertino's enthusiasm and pride over the fact that the Proud Boys participated in storming the US Capitol, and that “we made this happen” is best interpreted as a boastful expression of pride that exaggerates the role of the Proud Boys in the attack on the Capitol. Statements like this are open to interpretation, and therefore must be weighed against the large body of exculpatory evidence supporting the conclusion that the Proud Boys never devised any plan in advance of Jan 6 to storm the Capitol. For example, Zach Rehl, a MOSD leader who, unlike Jeremy Bertino, was actually present in Washington DC on January 6, 2021, clearly and unambiguously stated, in a private Telegram group chat he believed to be secure, that what happened on Jan 6 was totally unexpected and therefore not part of any pre-conceived plan: However, the fact that Enrique Tarrio used the phrase “The Winter Palace” while celebrating what happened on January 6, certainly requires some further analysis. The phrase “The Winter Palace”, borrowed from the history of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, appeared in the “1776 Returns” document that Eryka Gemma sent to Enrique Tarrio as an attachment on Telegram on December 30, 2020. (See above discussion about “1776 Returns”). The defense argued that Tarrio likely never even read the document, since there was no definitive proof that he actually opened the attachment on Telegram. However, this is one instance where the defense's position is weak. Enrique Tarrio used terminology like “The Winter Palace” and “revolutionaries”, both of which are linguistic outliers in the online MAGA-sphere (where the patriotic ethos of the American Revolution has a lot more ideological sway than Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik revolutionaries), supporting the conclusion that Tarrio very likely at least read “1776 Returns” at some point. Moreover, Tarrio Googled the phrase “the winter palace” on January 1, 2021, a day after Eryka Gemma sent it to him on Telegram, suggesting that Tarrio read 1776 Returns but wasn't familiar with the historical significance of the “Winter Palace”. But this evidence hardly proves that Enrique Tarrio actually used “1776 Returns” as some kind of playbook for orchestrating the attack on the US Capitol on Jan 6. There are zero references to “1776 Returns” or the plan outlined therein among all the MOSD Telegram evidence and the MOSD video conference. Additionally, the actual events of January 6 were fundamentally different from the plan proposed in “1776 Returns”, which described coordinated peaceful sit-ins across multiple government buildings (not including the Capitol building), rather than a frontal attack focused exclusively on the US Capitol building implemented by riling up a crowd of “normie” Trump supporters. Finally, a large body of exculpatory evidence strongly indicates there was never any plan conceived in advance of January 6 to attack the US Capitol. See also the above section analyzing “1776 Returns” in greater detail. |
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|
Indictment reads:
108. At 11:16 p.m., TARRIO posted a message on social media that featured a video of
a masked man resembling TARRIO, wearing a flowing black cape, standing in front of a deserted
Capitol. The video was captioned, “Premonition.”
Full context from Parler:
Enrique Tarrio · @NobleLead
|
Included in the indictment because it
contains a vaguely threatening black and white video of Enrique Tarrio ominously standing in front of the US Capitol building. The caption,
reading “premonition”, suggests a foreshadowing of future events.
This video was posted publicly on Parler,
late at night on January 6 at 11:16 PM, several hours after the Capitol riot ended. However, since Enrique Tarrio was not present in Washington DC
on January 6, 2021, the video must have been created some time before January 6 when Tarrio was in DC. Therefore, the prosecution
argued that
the video is
incriminating because it appears to foreshadow the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol building.
But even if the video was created prior to January 6, the caption reading “premonition” was posted after the Capitol riot ended, thus diluting the impact of this post as an incriminating prognosis of future events. Moreover, Enrique Tarrio has on multiple occasions posted similarly cryptic and vaguely threatening messages on social media with a flair for the dramatic. For example, Tarrio also posted another message on Telegram that appears to foreshadow the Jan 6 Capitol attack in a much more obvious manner. In that post, a photograph shows Tarrio standing alone in front of the US Capitol building. Underneath is a caption reading “I'm home. #Soon”.
Seems pretty damning, right? Except, that post wasn't included in the indictment, because Enrique Tarrio posted it way back in November of 2019, well before Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and thus well before the Proud Boys had any conceivable motive to storm the US Capitol building. Obviously, Enrique Tarrio had no plan to storm the US Capitol building back in 2019, and no prosecutor could possibly argue otherwise. Yet Tarrio nonetheless still posted this ominous photo and caption on Telegram back in 2019. Thus, we can conclude either that Tarrio is clairvoyant or owns a time machine, or that he's just a provocative guy who enjoys getting attention from posting vaguely threatening, cryptic messages on social media. Tarrio's posting history suggests we should not read too deeply into these sort of cryptic messages because they are likely just a form of marketing. Indeed, Tarrio described his own job title in the “Ministry of Self Defense” (MOSD) chapter as “Marketing” (see Govt Exhibit 503-18). |
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|
From New MOSD Telegram group chat (Government Exhibit 509-40):
|
This Telegram post from MOSD leader John Charles Stewart (Johnny Blackbeard) was not included in the indictment, most likely because
Johnny Blackbeard was not present in Washington DC on January 6 and was never charged with
seditious conspiracy. However, this post is perhaps the clearest statement from a Proud Boy
that seems to lend support to the prosecution's theory that the Proud Boys planned the
attack on the Capitol building in advance of January 6, and orchestrated the attack by riling up a mob of “normie” Trump supporters in order
to use them as a battering ram to breach the police defensive lines and storm the
Capitol building. Johnny Blackbeard posted this on the morning of January 7th, 2021. The incriminating content
of this post suggests that on the day after January 6th, the Proud Boys were still
not too concerned about the possibility of their Telegram messages being recovered and used against them
by law enforcement. (Although this attitude would soon change by January 8th.
See Govt Exhibit 509-41.)
Johnny Blackbeard's post suggests, at the very least, that some of the Proud Boys leadership wholeheartedly supported the Jan 6 Capitol riot. Again, there was never any doubt that the Proud Boys enthusiastically supported the Jan 6 rioters, and the defense never argued otherwise. But their enthusiasm and support for the storming of the Capitol does not prove the Proud Boys actually planned in advance of January 6 to storm the Capitol building. However, Johnny Blackbeard's statement that “we needed [the normie Trump supporters] to step up” can easily be framed as evidence supporting the prosecution's seditious conspiracy case, because it suggests the Proud Boys were specifically relying on “normie” pro-Trump protesters to storm and occupy the Capitol building. Interpreting Johnny Blackbeard's statement as indicating reliance on the “normies” suggests the corollary that the Proud Boys had a plan, devised in advance of January 6, that relied on the presence of a large crowd of “normies”. Of course, the defense would argue that Johnny Blackbeard's statement about “need[ing] [the normies] to step up” does not prove advance planning, but merely proves that after the Capitol riot, Johnny Blackbeard realized the missed opportunity and lamented that the “normies” failed to occupy the building or act cohesively towards a political objective. However, in my opinion, a reasonable person might interpret Johnny Blackbeard's post as supportive of the prosecution's seditious conspiracy case. At least in isolation. But after examining the wider context surrounding Johnny Blackbeard's Telegram post, a reasonable person would likely arrive at the polar opposite conclusion. In fact, I included this Telegram post from Johnny Blackbeard — which again was not included in the indictment — because it demonstrates how evidence that initially appears to support the prosecution's case can sometimes be rendered a lot less persuasive after being reevaluated in light of additional context. The day after January 6, about 30 minutes before Johnny Blackbeard posted the seemingly incriminating message about how the normies needed “to step up”, he participated in the following conversation (Govt Exhibit 509-40) with two other MOSD leaders in the same Telegram group chat: This suggests, with significantly more clarity and significantly less room for interpretation, that as far as Johnny Blackbeard was concerned, there was never “really a plan”. And Jeremy Bertino, another MOSD leader, agreed with Johnny Blackbeard, saying there was “definitely not enough planning for this rally”. Tellingly, Bertino referred to the object of the planning for January 6 as a “rally” rather than something like an “operation” or “mission”, providing us with an important insight into how MOSD leadership viewed the purpose of traveling to DC on January 6. This suggests the Proud Boys initially viewed January 6 as just another national rally, similar to all the other rallies the Proud Boys attended throughout 2020, rather than a uniquely special operation to storm the Capitol. (This is consistent with Jeremy Bertino's earlier statement on the morning of January 5th, referring to a plan for “the rally tomorrow”, rather than something like the “mission” or “operation” tomorrow.) Jeremy Bertino continued, saying that the lack of planning for the rally could be attributed to the fact that the Proud Boys were “busy trying to set this thing up”. As tempting as it may be for the prosecution to interpret “set this thing up” as a reference to some secret plan to storm the Capitol, the overall context makes it obvious that “this thing” refers to the new Ministry of Self Defense (MOSD) chapter, which was established specifically to curtail aggressive behavior (Govt Exhibit 500-69) from rank-and-file Proud Boys at national rallies, and was intended to be rolled out for a trial-run on January 6, 2021. (See above discussion on the purpose of the MOSD chapter.) Enrique Tarrio stated explicitly that the MOSD chapter will be running “training exercises” during “the 5th at night and 6th throughout the day” and that “we are going to be using the 6th as a test [of the new MOSD policies]” (see Govt Exhibit 503-18). The starkly different conclusions we naturally arrive at when evaluating Johnny Blackbeard's seemingly incriminating Telegram post in isolation versus evaluating the post within the larger context of the ongoing dialogue in the Telegram group chat, demonstrates the paramount importance of context when evaluating the Telegram and Parler evidence presented as incriminating. Thus, Johnny Blackbeard's seemingly incrimating admission that “we needed [the normies] to step up” must be evaluated in light of his other statement, posted 30 minutes earlier in the same Telegram group chat, where he said “I don't think there ever was really a plan. ... We were caught off guard for sure”. A synthesis of both statements favors the defense's interpretation of Johnny Blackbeard's statement about the normies “stepping up”: Johnny Blackbeard was simply lamenting a missed opportunity after the fact, not referring to some secret plan devised in advance of January 6 to storm the Capitol. See also the above sections on the purpose of the MOSD chapter and the Proud Boys' true plan for Jan 6 for a more exhaustive review of the relevant evidence. |
