Seditious conspiracy trial against Proud Boys members in hands of jury

Amna Nawaz:

Jurors are deliberating in a highly watched case against the Proud Boys, a right-wing extremist group whose members stormed the Capitol on January 6.

John Yang has more on the trial's developments.

John Yang:

Amna, five members of the Proud Boys are facing multiple criminal counts, including seditious conspiracy. That's a rarely used Civil War era offense defined as plotting to overthrow the government.

Prosecutors say Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and the four other defendants saw themselves as Donald Trump's army and heeded his call to attack the Capitol after Trump lost the 2020 election. Defense attorneys say the violence was unplanned and that a conviction would criminalize political protest.

NPR's justice correspondent, Carrie Johnson, been following all this for him inside the federal courthouse.

Carrie, this has been very closely watch. What's the significance? What's — why is this trial so important?

Carrie Johnson, NPR:

John, as you mentioned, this is just one of three seditious conspiracy trials we have had so far.

The first two have related to the Oath Keepers, another far right group. And its leader, Stewart Rhodes, and one of his top deputies were convicted, as well as several other Oath Keeper defendants. This is the first case, though, against the former leaders of the Proud Boys.

And the Proud Boys, as people may remember, some of them engaged in a lot of violence on January 6, and Enrique Tarrio and some of these other defendants celebrated with great jubilance, according to the government, after then — after Donald Trump said during a presidential debate that the Proud Boys should stand back and stand by for him.

So it's resonant politically, as well as legally, in the context of January 6.

John Yang:

What's the sort of evidence has the government been providing to try to make their case?

Carrie Johnson:

Oh, John, we have had so much evidence, 500,000 chat messages, video, podcasts of these defendants, and lots and lots of witnesses, witnesses including former Proud Boys themselves who pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the government, police officers who were on the front lines that day and suffered abuse from rioters.

And then we also had a number of people, including two of the defendants made the risky decision to testify. Enrique Tarrio, the most high-profile defendant, did not take the stand. But two of the men who sit next to him at the defense table did, to somewhat mixed results, really.

John Yang:

You mentioned, of course, there was the conviction last year of Stewart Rhodes on these same charges. Does that put pressure on the Justice Department to win a conviction here?

Carrie Johnson:

I think the pressure on the Justice Department is enormous when it comes to January 6.

There's been a public appetite and, to some extent, a political appetite for the Justice Department to climb up the ladder of responsibility and build cases, not just people who trespassed on Capitol grounds on January 6, and not just people who entered the building that day, but some of the people who helped organize.

And the Justice Department's theory is that senior leaders in the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys were planning for weeks, if not longer, to try to do something to help Donald Trump retain power. And these seditious conspiracy cases are a central element of that theory.

John Yang:

And Tarrio wasn't even in Washington that day. He wasn't even at the Capitol.

Carrie Johnson:

He wasn't at the Capitol.

And his defense lawyer, Nayib Hassan, really highlighted that. Tarrio was in Baltimore on January 6 because he had been charged with other offenses earlier in D.C., and a judge banished him to leave the city. But prosecutors say that Tarrio was trying to direct the action from this hotel room in Baltimore.

Tarrio's lawyer says that he's being made a scapegoat here, that the real person to blame is former President Donald Trump and that Trump's own words, his motivation, and his anger is what really fueled that mob to storm the Capitol on the 6th.

John Yang:

And we have also learned during this trial about a relationship between Tarrio and a D.C. police officer.

Carrie Johnson:

Yes, that was one of the tantalizing elements of this case, that Tarrio maintained a close relationship with somebody in the D.C. Police Department who was responsible for monitoring intelligence.

And that officer, who's now been suspended as an investigation continues, basically says he was just pumping Tarrio and other potential extremists for information.

But the Justice Department and several of its witnesses characterized this relationship as really inappropriate and suggested that, in text messages and other communications, that this police officer may have tipped off Enrique Tarrio that he was going to be arrested on these other charges for defacing a Black Lives Matter banner at an historically African American church here in D.C.

So we have we have learned a little bit more about that kind of bizarre and potentially inappropriate relationship that Tarrio and other extremists had with police officers responsible for predicting the intelligence in advance of January 6.

John Yang:

Carrie Johnson of NPR, thank you very much.

Carrie Johnson:

My pleasure.