Front Burner - The Proud Boys on trial

Episode Date: January 17, 2023

This week, five leaders of the violent far-right group Proud Boys are on trial in Washington D.C., charged with seditious conspiracy for conspiring to overthrow the government, in the U.S. Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021. Andy Campbell is the author of We Are Proud Boys and reports on extremism as a Senior Editor at HuffPost. He’s been covering this story from the courtroom. And he’s with us today to explain how the case could reveal the inner-workings of the group, their connections with Republicans, and how the American government has responded to the threat extremist groups pose to democracy.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. But are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities as we saw in Kenosha and as we've seen in Portland. What do you want to call him? Give me a name.

White supremacist and white supremacist. White supremacist and white supremacist. Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. So that infamous moment in a presidential debate propelled a fringe group of far-right men with violent tactics right into the middle of American politics. The Proud Boys wanted President Trump to keep power. And when Trump lost, they took matters into their own hands. There's probably about 300 Proud Boys. They're marching eastbound.

We have a breach of the Capitol! Breach of the Capitol! Breach of the Capitol! Now, five leaders of the Proud Boys are on trial in Washington, D.C., charged with seditious conspiracy. The case could reveal the inner workings of the group, their connections with Republicans, and how the American government has responded to the threat extremist groups pose to democracy. Andy Campbell is the author of We Are Proud Boys and reports on extremism as a senior editor at HuffPost. And he's been covering this story from the courtroom. Hey, Andy, it's so great to have you back on FrontBurner.

Happy to be here. Thanks for having me again. Great to have you. And I know last time you got to talk with my colleague, Allie, about the Oath Keepers trial. So I'm really looking forward to this conversation. I know there have been over 950 people charged so far in connection with January 6th. Out of all of those cases, why is this case involving five guys so important, you think? Well, you played that moment, Trump saying, stand back and stand by, Proud Boys. And even without this case, we know that the Proud Boys jumped into action as soon as he said that. They took it as marching orders. They said January 6th was going to be their last stand for their president. And what the Justice Department believes is that they had an outsized role, these five Proud Boys leaders, in not only

executing the attack, because dozens of Proud Boys were there at the Capitol that day and stormed it, but in planning it and rallying people to DC, gathering supplies, equipment, and money, and then of course, pushing forward this throng of people into the Capitol itself on the day. So they believe that the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who just finished up one of their main trials, had this bigger role than the rest of these defendants in making this thing happen. And we'll see through this case whether a jury agrees with them, but it's not looking good for the Proud Boys because you already have several Oath Keepers who were found guilty of seditious conspiracy. A federal grand jury has convicted the founder of the Oath Keepers militia, Stuart Rhodes,

of seditious conspiracy in the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. A second defendant was also found guilty. And several Proud Boys have already pleaded guilty in deals with the government. Right. And just take me through seditious conspiracy a little bit. Like this is a pretty big charge, right? It's not used very often. No, it's difficult to prove and it's not brought very often as a charge. I think the last time before this set of charges that it was successfully prosecuted was in the 90s. It's a very serious charge.

And it's the government saying we mean business. It's a maximum 20 years imprisonment. It's an uphill battle for both sides of this case. And I know that we're only a couple of days into the trial now. But tell me a little bit broadly about the case that the Department of Justice has laid out so far. Yeah, it looks not unlike the January 6th committee's investigation, which just wrapped up at the end of last year. You know, they have troves of media, videos, text messages sent between the Proud Boys showing again that they rallied each other

together, gathered equipment, and then on the day set up this encrypted chat room that they called the Ministry of Self-Defense. And it had all of these Proud Boys leaders in there. They were barking orders at each other, telling each other not to wear the Proud Boys polo, the black and yellow Fred Perry polo that counts as their uniform, because they didn't want to be identified, and instead wear orange beanies so they could identify each other in the field. I mean, it's pretty clear through the evidence that the DOJ has already shown that these guys, you know, met business. They were tactical that day. They had a plan going into it. Whether or not they can prove that, you know,

this was a plot beforehand remains to be seen. But there is a lot of evidence. And just some of the specific evidence that might go to that point, that this is a plot before. Like, what are we seeing? Well, you know, Enrique Tarrio, the chairman of the Proud Boys, brought in dozens of Proud Boys and their allies into D.C. in the months preceding. Immediately after Donald Trump said stand back, stand by, they made a plan to go to D.C. And they joined Stop the Steal rallies.

They very clearly believed the election of Joe Biden was fraudulent. We're going to come out here tomorrow. We're going to come out here Friday. We're going to come out here Saturday. And we're going to keep coming out until something gets fixed. And if they steal this election, we'll be out every day. And they were very violent at those events. In one event on December 12th, 2020. Enrique brought a number of Proud Boys marching through the streets of D.C. and they went outside historic black churches, ripped down their banners, and in one case, burned it in front of the church. Yes, I did burn their property and I apologized to them. But after what I heard from them, this was strictly political. They wanted to send a message.

They wanted to put the bad guy, the villain in jail. Congratulations, they have. This was a group that was totally volatile, totally ready to fight for their president, as they had been doing for six years. And they were ready to disrupt what they saw as a fraudulent election. So that evidence of their actions leading up to January 6th is going to be key here for the DOJ. And you mentioned Enrique Tarrio, he's one of the five that's been charged, right? I know we're going to get into him a little bit more later. What about their ties to Trump and the Republican Party? What do we know right now or

might we learn about during the trial? Sure. You know, it's interesting. We don't know exactly where the Justice Department will go with its questioning, but we do know that the Proud Boys have ties to Trump's inner circle all the way up to the top. They are friends with Roger Stone, one of Trump's top confidants. And Roger Stone told me from my book, admitted that he'd been advising Enrique Tarrio politically for years and saw him as a mentee and a friend. And we know that Enrique Tarrio was in contact with Roger Stone leading up to January 6th and on January 6th. The government found a text message group called Friends of Stone on Roger Stone's phone, and that included Enrique Tarrio and a leader of the Oath Keepers who was found guilty of seditious conspiracy, Stuart Rhodes, both in that chat. As we've seen, the Proud Boys were also part of the Friends of Stone network. Stone's ties to the Proud Boys go back many years. He's even taken their so-called

fraternity creed required for the first level of initiation to the group. Hi, I'm Roger Stone. I'm a Western chauvinist. I refuse to apologize for the fear of the modern world. We don't know exactly what they talked about, but we know that, you know, the Proud Boys have long pushed for political legitimacy so that they can fight in the street. And they did that by gaining these relationships in the GOP. Yeah. Yeah. If the GOJ wants bigger fish to fry here, they have that fish at the end of their hook. So it'll be interesting to see if they push for more information about those relationships.

I'm not sure yet. Right, right. With Roger Stone, like one of Trump's most trusted fixers and allies. The text messages, do we know that we don't know the content of these text messages? Does the DOJ know the content of those of those text messages? DOJ know the content of those text messages? We don't know much. There was a little bit that came out during the January 6th committee, but there was no sort of smoking gun moment. I'm not sure if they have the full thread of what was said in those text messages. And I think that if we did, we would know what Roger Stone was doing that day in terms of talking to Trump and what he was relaying, if anything. Yeah. Oh, man, I bet you would love to get your hands on that. I would love to get my hands on that. I would love to see them, too.

How has the defense responded so far? My sense from reading what's been happening is that it's been a bit chaotic in the courtroom. Yeah, I mean, each of these five Proud Boys has their own defense team. And, you know, because these are far-right extremists, the people that they surround themselves range from very serious standard defense lawyers to clowns. So what it looked like in the courtroom is you have this array of tactics and you can kind

of see what the defense is doing and how this is going to play out. You have one defense attorney calling the Proud Boys a scapegoat. Enrique Tarrio's lawyer said, it wasn't my client who brought everyone to DC. It wasn't my client who told them to march to the Capitol. And it wasn't my client who brought everyone to DC. It wasn't my client who told them to march to the Capitol. And it wasn't my client who failed to stop the violence when he had an opportunity. That was Donald Trump. So there is an element of blaming Donald Trump here. There was another defense attorney who said, January 6th, if that was an attack, who said, January 6th, if that was an attack, then it's the lamest attack I've ever seen. January 6th was a six-hour inconvenience for Congress. I'm not sure you could call this a disruption of the court, right? So I don't think that that defense is going to work out very well,

but you can see them sort of throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. Now, the most interesting defense that I saw in the court was one of the defendant's attorneys, Nick Smith, said that they have access to several FBI informants who had infiltrated the Proud Boys and even marched with them to the Capitol that day, and that those informants are ready to testify that the Proud Boys did not have a plan to storm the federal government knew going into this and why law enforcement wasn't able to stop it. Right. Because they had informants on the ground with these guys. Right. Yeah. Who are now testifying for the defense. It's really quite a turn.

generally being painted here, right? Like the DOJ is painting a picture of the Proud Boys as organized, connected, deliberate in their plot to stop Joe Biden from becoming president. On the other hand, you know, depending on which lawyers up there, they're saying, well, these guys weren't really very organized. I saw one defense lawyer calling the Proud Boys a drinking club that essentially got caught up in the moment. And from your own reporting, I know you've spent so much time steeped in this. Which version of the Proud Boys do you think is true here? The easy answer is both. But, you know, Gavin McInnes, a Canadian himself and the founder of the Proud Boys, he built them live on his reactionary talk show. And he built them out

of the audience of that show. And the audience was angry, drunken young men who wanted to get out in the street and fight for GOP causes. And that's exactly what they did for Gavin McGinnis. A lot of these guys are drunken buffoons. They rip lines of cocaine, read from Pat Buchanan and go out there and punch leftists in the street. But what Enrique Tarrio did when he took over in 2018, Gavin McGinnis had stepped down because he was involved in a very violent attack in New York City there. You can see a beatdown that goes down with punches, kicks, people stepping on other people's necks. How that all started, we're not certain, but there were two groups that were going at each other, these Proud Boys and also a group called Antifa, which stands for anti-fascist.

A lot of grunting, a lot of beefing going on. And when Enrique Tarrio took over, he said, look, we are going to crumble like a lot of the groups did after Unite the Right, that neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville in 2017. We're going to crumble if we're just seen as a hate group and a fight club. We need to become a more political monster. We need to run for office ourselves. We need to throw our weight behind Republican politicians that we agree with ideologically. And we need to buddy up with people at the highest levels of the GOP. And that's exactly what they've done. There was such love

at that rally. And they were peaceful people. These were great people. The crowd was unbelievable. And I mentioned the word love, the love, the love in the air. I've never seen anything like it. What that has served to do is make them more threatening by way of normalizing them to the point where they have allies everywhere and they have the support of a swath of Republican Americans. And so they've been able to continue and stay resilient in the face of so many charges and attacks that they've been involved in because a lot of the country believes that they're a necessary fighting force for the GOP. And so they are very serious and they are, you

know, very threatening. And that's by way of the political climate that they've helped foment in this country. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here.

You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Tell me a little bit more, if you could, about how they ingratiated themselves so much with the Republican Party. You know, I've heard people call them kind of like a de facto arm of the Republican Party, of the GOP.

Right, Absolutely. And, you know, they started Enrique Tarrio met Roger Stone in Florida. And the way that the Proud Boys sidled up to these Republicans is they did a lot of that kind of work where they were, you know, doing security. We're going to protect you from Antifa if they show up. going to protect you from Antifa if they show up. And so they did it for prominent Republicans and media figures like Matt Gaetz, like Ann Coulter. And through that, they were shown and celebrated by the GOP and Fox News and the media as this sort of defense force for Trump politics. Ann Coulter, sort of crimey media pundit on the right, she said after January 6th in a blog titled, Thank God for the Proud Boys, that they saved her from this leftist group of protesters

at one of her events. And she said, we need this in the Republican Party because crusty old Republicans aren't going to get out there and fight for us. The police aren't out there for us. These are our guys. And so they've they've done a very, very good job. And on the other, but they've gained offices in school boards and Republican committees in Florida. And they've sort of gotten these footholds in smaller jurisdictions where they're now influencing local politics and throwing their support behind people who sort of agree with what they're doing. The New York Times reported yesterday that members have increasingly appeared in recent months at town council gatherings, school board presentations and health department question and answer sessions across the country. Members of the Proud Boys stood watch at the meeting of the new Hanover County Board of Education.

None of the members of the Cape Fear Proud Boys spoke at the board during the meeting, but they gave several people speaking against the mask mandate standing ovations. It keeps extremism experts up at night. Yeah, I want to loop back to that. But I wonder if first we could spend a bit more time talking about Enrique Tarrio, right? I find this story really interesting because he used to be an FBI informant. And just, I don't know, I'm just trying to square these things. Like, how did it all start for him? Yeah, I mean, you know, he is Cuban-American. His parents immigrated and he's from Florida. He got into politics very early. He told me that he did

thousands of door knocks for Trump when he ran for president. But he was also just kind of a career criminal. Years ago, he was caught on fraud charges by the FBI. And the FBI turned him into an informant and helped him track down other people who worked with him. The fraud was related to defrauding people on diabetic test strips. It's like really grimy stuff, right? And so he was an FBI informant for a while. And the Proud Boys did not know this until the DOJ started investigating January 6th. And so we kind of all learned it as this paperwork was coming out in that investigation.

And the Proud boys were not happy. And a lot of guys said that they would not be working with Enrique anymore. Enrique ends up going to jail and steps down technically as the chairman. But again, his power remains and his influence remains. And also at the national level, it doesn't really matter who's at the top because there are so many different chapters of the Proud Boys. There's like 150 chapters across the country. They're so different. You might have one chapter in Florida full of many people of color, and you'll have a chapter in Oklahoma that's full of neo-Nazis. I mean, the idea that the Proud Boys could crumble when some revelation like Enrique being an informant

comes out, it's just not going to happen. The Proud Boys machine keeps on working in the face of any adversity. Maybe worth noting, he wasn't even there January 6th, right? Like, didn't he get arrested before him? And yet he's still being charged here with these very serious charges. Yes. So he was arrested. He was pulled over and arrested for the flag burning incident that we talked about. And he also, at the time, had on him several ammo magazines that had the Proud Boys insignia on them of a big no-no in D.C. He was driving into D.C. at the time. And he got arrested and he was barred from going into D.C. on January 6th. So he wasn't at the rally, but he did set up these chats.

He put together all of these resources that went into the Proud Boys involvement in January 6th, and he helped them craft a plan and celebrated it afterward. One of the texts he sent that was shown in court the other day after January 6th was, make no mistake, we did this. And there are so, so many messages like that from all of these five Proud Boys leaders just showing, listen guys, we are going to exact this plan and then afterwards celebrating it and saying, we did this guys.

Great work, plan worked. Yeah. The other guys that are charged, is there anything notable that you think is worth us highlighting here? court showed Dominic Pozzola ripping a riot shield away from an officer and then using that shield to breach a window in the Capitol and create a portal by which everyone else went through. The Proud Boys were the first to breach the Capitol. And then Dominic Pozzola gets inside the Capitol, takes a selfie video, lights up a cigar and says, victory smoke in the Capitol. He says, I knew we could take this

mother effer if we tried hard enough. Proud of your boy. And this evidence is, you know, this evidence of him committing a crime was used by his defense attorney as an apparent reason why he should be called off on all the charges. His attorney said, this is proof my client's innocent because, you know, he's not charged with taking over a building. He's charged with seditious conspiracy. So charge him with this other thing? Okay. Yeah, I don't know how that's going to work in court. You mentioned earlier that the removal of Tario hasn't brought about the downfall of the Proud Boys have been up to since the attack on the Capitol? Have they toned it down at all?

Have they ramped it up? How would you describe them now? Yeah. You know, 900 arrests, hundreds of prosecutions in the January 6th attack. And we haven't seen our extremist crisis tamp down at all. The Proud Boys, week after week, have been mobilizing across the country on GOP grievances. So whatever Tucker Carlson or Donald Trump point their finger at, the Proud Boys will be there within 24 hours to add a harassment and violence element. So, for instance, all summer, Fox News was complaining about drag queen story hours.

Let's say you were interested in sexualizing children. And unfortunately, some people are. What would you do? You might have a drag queen story hour at a library or a school. That's where you would indoctrinate and sexualize children. It's happening across the country. And saying that drag queens represent groomers and rapists, that LGBTQ plus in general represents a threat to Americans. And the Proud Boys have joined neo-Nazis and militiamen across the country at Drag Queen Story Hours.

More than 50 members of the far right white nationalist groups Proud Boys and Patriot Front marched in the streets of Columbus, Ohio on Saturday. They were protesting a local school's Holly Drag Storytime event, where three local drag performers read children's books and sing holiday songs. It's one of a number of drag story hours disrupted by far-right protesters this year, including in Nevada, Oregon, and California. One event in Nevada was at a public library, a reading event to kids, and a Proud Boy brought a rifle there and sent children and parents fleeing, thinking they were about to have a mass shooting there. This crisis hasn't slowed down whatsoever. And my concern

is that regardless of the outcome of this case, we're not going to see a chilling effect whatsoever on our extremist crisis. Going into Trump's next election cycle, I can't imagine going to any political event or even any American civic event and not see guys in makeshift body armor and weaponry harassing and attacking people. It's just how it is here now. Thanks so much for this, Andy. This was really interesting. And I feel like maybe we're going to have to get you back on to talk more about what's been happening in the courtroom

as this trial unfolds. So thank you so much for coming by. Love talking to you guys. I cannot wait to see what happens in this trial. It's going to be so interesting and I'd love to come back and talk to you. Yeah, we got to get those text messages. Roger Stone. Yeah. Thanks. Yes, please. All right. That is all for today. I'm J.B. Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.