US prosecutors charge the group’s leaders with “incitement conspiracy” in an alleged plot to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.
U.S. prosecutors and lawyers for the far-right Proud Boys group have delivered their closing arguments in a trial to determine whether the group’s leaders committed an incendiary conspiracy in their alleged plot to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and destroy the peaceful transfer of force.
On Tuesday, the defense team accused Proud Boys leaders of being used as scapegoats for former President Donald Trump, who urged supporters in the wake of his 2020 election loss, including telling those gathered at the Capitol to “fight like the hell” during a pre-riot speech.
In contrast, then-Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was not in Washington, D.C. on the date, because he had been banned from the capital after being arrested on charges of defacing a Black Lives Matter banner, attorney Nayib Hassan said.
“They were the words of Donald Trump. It was his motivation. It was his anger that caused what happened on January 6 in your beautiful and amazing city,” Hassan told jurors in Washington, DC federal court. “It wasn’t Enrique Tarrio. They want to use Enrique Tarrio as a scapegoat for Donald J. Trump and those in power.”
The statements came a day after US prosecutors put forward their own final arguments in the case, saying the Proud Boys “thirst for violence and organized for action” ahead of the storming of the US Capitol.
“These defendants saw themselves as Donald Trump’s army, fighting to keep their favorite leader in power, whatever the law or the courts had to say,” said prosecutor Conor Mulroe.
The case represents the first major trial involving leaders of the far-right Proud Boys, a neo-fascist group of self-described “Western chauvinists” that remains a force in mainstream Republican circles.
Tarrio, a Miami resident, is on trial with Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola, whom prosecutors have identified as the group’s top lieutenants.
If found guilty of seditious conspiracy, a rarely used charge that can be difficult to prove, the men could face up to 20 years in prison. Jurors could begin deliberating on Tuesday.
Defense attorneys have argued that prosecutors have provided no evidence of a conspiracy or plan for the Proud Boys to attack the Capitol. They have tried to portray the far-right group as a club solely engaged in self-defense violence against anti-fascist activists.
Nicholas Smith, attorney for the former leader of the Nordean Proud Boys chapter, said Monday prosecutors had based their case on “misrepresentation and innuendo”.
Meanwhile, the administration has built its case on a wealth of messages that Proud Boys leaders and members exchanged privately in encrypted chats — and posted publicly on social media — before, during and after the U.S. Capitol uprising.
Prosecutor Mulroe has argued that a conspiracy can be an unspoken and implied “mutual understanding, achieved with a wink and a nod.”
The trial comes after the US Justice Department has already obtained seditious conspiracy convictions against the founder and members of another far-right group, the Oath Keepers.
So far, more than 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the storming of the US Capitol.