4 Proud Boys Charged with Seditious Conspiracy

Facts

• Proud Boys members including leader Enrique Tarrio, as well as Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, and Zachary Rehl, have been convicted of seditious conspiracy for their involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, US Capitol riots.¹
• Alongside the four convicted, who also faced charges of obstructing the Electoral College vote and tampering with evidence, the jury also convicted a fifth member, Dominic Pezzola, of obstructing a proceeding of Congress and the destruction of government property, among others.²
• After the three-month trial and more than a week of deliberations, however, Pezzola was found not guilty of seditious conspiracy.³
• Of the five defendants, all but Tarrio entered the Capitol on Jan. 6 due to his prior arrest on Jan. 4. Prosecutors said he helped direct them from afar after he was ordered by a judge to stay out of Washington following his arrest for burning a Black Lives Matter banner at a church.⁴
• The conviction comes after members of another right-wing group, the Oath Keepers, were found guilty of the same crime last year, including its leader Stewart Rhodes. Tarrio's indictment claims he met with Rhodes in a Washington parking garage on Jan. 5.⁵
• Before the convictions of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers members, which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, less than 12 Americans had ever been convicted of treason or seditious conspiracy throughout US history.⁶

Sources: ¹Washington Examiner, ²CNN, ³Wall Street Journal, ⁴Baltimore Sun, ⁵Breitbart, and ⁶Forbes.

Narratives

• Democratic narrative, as provided by Washington Post. Donald Trump called on his supporters to "stand by" after losing the election, and the Proud Boys took him at his word. Under the leadership and persuasion of the former president, these individuals violently broke into the US Capitol thinking they would stop Joe Biden from becoming president, which is a blatant violation of the law and arguably treasonous. This case was cut and dry, and the jury made the right decision.
• Pro-Trump narrative, as provided by Daily Caller. These charges were based on the loosest definition of 'seditious conspiracy,' with federal prosecutors claiming that an intricate plan isn't required to be a conspiracy. The defense was also barred from calling witnesses regarding alleged federal informants among the Proud Boys on Jan. 6. This calls into question whether the jury received all the facts necessary to convict American citizens of such a serious crime.
• Establishment-critical narrative, as provided by New York Times. Both critics on the right and the left have raised deep concerns about the role of FBI informants in the orbit of the Proud Boys, including Tarrio's alleged past as a "prolific informant" himself. We must be cautious of conspiracy theories from both sides, but there's good cause for concern that the agency's informants got entangled in this group in a messy fashion. Americans have every right to question the FBI as an institution and if it protected democracy the best it could have on Jan 6.