To convict Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and three close allies of seditious conspiracy, prosecutors pulled from thousands of videos and text messages indicating that by Jan. 6, 2021, the right-wing group’s anger and aggression toward government authority had been growing for weeks.
The Proud Boys were mobilized by President Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud and by their own frustration with D.C. police, whom they saw as failing to protect them during street clashes with far-left protesters in late 2020. When Trump called for a “wild” rally in D.C. on Jan. 6, prosecutors said, Tarrio created a hand-picked “Ministry of Self Defense” or MOSD to lead the Proud Boys that day.
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The Justice Department argued the Proud Boys’ leadership, which communicated in several encrypted group chats, viewed members as “Trump’s army” ready to do the president’s bidding. No concrete plan for taking the Capitol or stopping the transfer of power on Jan. 6 was found among those messages. But prosecutors tied discussions of revolution and revolt to video of Proud Boys leading the mob on Jan. 6, arguing that the group was unique in its embrace of violence as a political tool. They made that case using both encrypted messages and public pronouncements on Parler, a conservative social media site.
Here is what jurors saw unfold through the Proud Boys’ eyes and in their own words.
Jeremy Bertino
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