New Seditious Conspiracy Charges Against the Proud Boys Point to Who Might Be Next

Photo: Enrique Tarrio via Facebook

During the September 2020 presidential debate, Donald Trump infamously refused to condemn the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group that often was showing up to stir trouble at Black Lives Matter protests. “Proud Boys, stand back, and stand by,” Trump instead said to them. That acknowledgment, and what appeared to be an order from their political leader, catapulted the Proud Boys to even greater national prominence. Later, Trump claimed he didn’t know who the Proud Boys were, and it remained unclear at the time why they were instructed to “stand by.”

Fast forward to yesterday, where a superseding indictment by a federal grand jury expanded charges against five Proud Boy members, including their leader Enrique Tarrio, to include seditious conspiracy, one of the most serious, politically-related charges that can be brought short of treason. It carries with it a possible prison sentence of up to 20 years. The 10-count indictment charges the defendants with “opposing the lawful transfer of presidential power by force” and mustering and coordinating the activity and movements of some 300 insurrectionists at the Capitol on January 6. The defendants are charged with leading the riot and storming the building, forcing Congressmembers to evacuate and delaying the 2020 electoral count.

The new charges bring two important prongs of the January 6 investigation closer together. On the one side is the “soft coup” under scrutiny over the past year by the January 6 Committee, where the evidence indicates that officials in the White House, including the former president, conspired through repeated but false claims of election fraud and the use of fake slates of swing state electors to overturn the results of the November 2020 presidential election. They targeted January 6 specifically hoping that Vice President Pence would unilaterally declare Trump the winner or otherwise delay the results by sending the question back to the states. Their plan failed after Pence refused to do so.

On the other side is the “hard coup” being actively investigated by the Justice Department, which has arrested and charged over 800 defendants who stormed the Capitol and importantly has now brought seditious conspiracy charges against the leadership of two militia-type organizations, the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. There are strong indications that several members of these militia groups are now cooperating with authorities, with unnamed, unindicted co-conspirators referred to as PERSONS 1-3 in the charging documents. That is bad news not just for the charged defendants but also for anyone who also took part in the planning or otherwise aided and abetted the violent insurrection.

This is why we now find ourselves at an interesting nexus. The soft coup and the hard coup appear not to have been separate and organic, as many on the right have insisted, but rather seem to share at least some coordination and planning—and the violent seditionist Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were deeply in on it. It will be up to the January 6 Committee, which begins its publicly televised hearings this week, to draw and flesh out these connections.

The indictment itself indicates one such connection. Paragraph 107 recounts how one of the insurrectionists, referred to as PERSON-1, who likely is an unindicted and cooperating witness named Jeremy Bertino, sent messages to Tarrio exulting in what they had done.

PERSON-1: Brother, you know we made this happen. I’m so proud of my country today

TARRIO: I know

PERSON-1: 1776 motherfuckers

TARRIO: The Winter Palace

PERSON-1: Dude. Did we just influence history?

TARRIO: Let’s see how this first plays out

PERSON-1: They HAVE to certify today. Or it’s invalid!

This exchange, and the last part of it in particular, highlights that the Proud Boys were aware of at least one goal of the hard coup mob attack that was shared by the soft coup plotters: to delay the certification vote past January 6. One key, possible outcome of the Eastman soft coup plan was to have Congress adjourn without having declared a winner so that Trump’s team would have time to pressure the state legislatures to act, presumably to “decertify” their results. One question to which investigators will certainly want answers, then, is how PERSON-1, presumably Proud Boy leader Bertino, came to understand that a delay that day would further the goals of disrupting the transfer of power. Did someone within Trump’s circle provide that information? With whom were the Proud Boys in touch?

The answer to that last question is “a lot of people.” Both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers maintained a constant presence at rallies and protests leading up to January 6. In text messages, the Oath Keepers discussed providing “security” for key figures who helped organize rallies around the country under the “Stop the Steal” brand, and they met and communicated regularly with pro-Trump protest organizers. This included security discussions for Ali Alexander, a far-right agitator who sported Proud Boy colors at Stop the Steal rallies and who organized and spoke at an evening rally on January 5 and a separate Capitol rally on January 6 where he whipped up the crowd. Alexander has been cooperating with the January 6 Committee and has been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury for documents relating to his organizing work. It also includes discussion for security for conspiracy peddler Alex Jones of Infowars, who has offered to cooperate in exchange for a deal from prosecutors; former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn; and Latinos for Trump leader Bianca Gracia, who was present during a pivotal meeting between the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys in an underground parking garage on January 5.

Perhaps most importantly, both organizations provided security for and have been in close working contact with political trickster and convicted but pardoned felon Roger Stone, a longtime Trump ally who has been a vocal backer of the Proud Boys and personal friend of their leader Tarrio. It is hard to imagine that Stone, who has been a consistent confidant to Trump, never once mentioned the Proud Boys to him and that Trump had never heard of them before the September 2020 debate. Stone admitted in a court hearing before Judge Amy Berman Jackson in D.C, where he was asked to explain why he violated her “media contact order” while his trial was underway, that he has directly worked with Enrique Tarrio and apparently trusted him so wholeheartedly that he gave him access to his phone, including his text messages and his social media.

Stone’s possible role in the attempted coup is likely to come under increased scrutiny now that more defendants have been charged with seditious conspiracy. One of Stone’s Oath Keeper bodyguards, Joshua James, who was likely a witness to much of what Stone was doing and saying on or around January 6, already has pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy charges relating to the Capitol attack and is cooperating with the government’s inquiry. For around 90 minutes on January 6, Stone was on the phone in his hotel room, presumably with James present, but would not allow the documentary crew that was regularly filming him to enter. It might prove to be non-coincidental that phone logs for the White House during critical hours of the attack appear to have been scrubbed of information about who exactly was speaking to the former president.

Stone also maintained a chat group known as “Friends of Stone” on the encrypted messaging service Signal in which some 47 individuals communicated about the election and January 6. On that group were some familiar names, including the now-indicted leaders of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. Also on that list were Owen Shroyer, considered the right-hand man of Alex Jones, and Ali Alexander of Stop the Steal. Stone had created the website for Stop the Steal in anticipation of a likely Hillary Clinton’s victory in 2016, and he reactivated it in 2020. As I wrote about earlier, Stone was instrumental in getting Stop the Steal off the ground and going again, and he has worked with the likes of Mike Flynn to sow disinformation about election fraud.

One thing already is clear: With the new charge of seditious conspiracy upon the Proud Boys leadership, the net for who might also be criminally liable just got cast far wider. Anyone who was aware of the plot could be charged as part of it or for aiding and abetting it. Further, the Justice Department appears to have plenty of cooperating witnesses within these organizations, and the conspirators were not careful either about keeping their communications wholly private or about their plans to destroy digital evidence of the conspiracy. Given this development, it is far too soon to declare that the Department’s January 6 investigation is near to drawing to a close. From what it appears, the investigation seems far more likely to begin to snare even bigger fish.