Former Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio and three of his Proud Boy minions have been convicted, following a three-month trial and seven days of jury deliberation, of seditious conspiracy for plotting to violently attack the US Capitol building in hopes that this would allow Donald Trump to remain president despite losing the 2020 election. They were also found guilty of trying to prevent the certification of the election and conspiracy to interfere with the duties of Congress.
The sedition charge alone carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, so it’s likely that by the time they get out they will be Proud Old Men.
The jury couldn’t agree on whether to convict Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola of seditious conspiracy, but did convict him on the other charges, which are also pretty serious.
While there wasn’t an explicit smoking gun, it was made clear to the jury that the group viewed themselves as Donald Trump’s Army and believed that they were fighting on his behalf.
Via New York Times:
A prime example of the Proud Boys’ ties to Mr. Trump came in December 2020, when he posted a message on Twitter calling for a “wild” protest to be held in Washington on Jan. 6. Hearing the post as a call to action, Mr. Tarrio and his lieutenants organized a group of so-called “real men” — referred to as the Ministry of Self-Defense — to be on the ground in Washington that day.
In private online chats, Mr. Tarrio said the group was meant to “standardize event organizing.” But he also added a cryptic message: “ — whispers — Seventeen seventy six.” Prosecutors said that was his subtle way of suggesting that the Ministry of Self-Defense was bent on revolution, and they called the group “a violent gang that came together to use force against its enemies.”
In a series of searches before the trial began, investigators collected more than a half million text messages from the Ministry of Self-Defense and other Proud Boys group chats. While some of the messages were overtly violent and hinted at action at the Capitol, none set forth an explicit plan to storm the building or to forcibly disrupt the election certification taking place inside.
Two former Proud Boys, one of whom had already pled guilty to sedition, helped the prosecution make their case, testifying to the fact that the general sentiment in the group was that they should use any means necessary, including violence, to ensure that Donald Trump could remain president. One of them, Matthew Greene, said that when the rioters burst through the barriers of the Capitol building, he realized that this had been the plan all along.
In one of the text messages that Tarrio, who was not even actually present that day, sent about the insurrection, he wrote “Make no mistake. We did this.” So it’s clear that at least he thinks he and the other Proud Boys were responsible for what happened.
Seditious conspiracy is an incredibly rare charge and hasn’t really been used much in the modern era. When it was used, it was used in some pretty gross ways — for example, John Adams’s Alien and Sedition Act made it a crime to criticize him or his Quasi-war, particularly if the critic’s name was Vice-President Thomas Jefferson. Later it was used against slaves who rebelled and tried to run away. It does not have a great history, and I tend to worry that a resurgence of the concept of it is usually going to hit those on the Left exclusively, for doing terrible things like protesting peacefully.
However, most of us can probably agree that “trying to overthrow the government by force” should generally carry a penalty!
The regular reader may remember I’m also not super psyched about incarceration as a concept, much less the way we do it here. That being said, in this case? It’s useful. I honestly think one of the only ways we will ever get any kind of criminal justice reform is if the bad shit that happens to everyone else starts happening to people that people on the Right actually care about.
We have a whole lot of people right now going vigilante, talking about how they want people put in prison forever for minor crimes, and getting all kinds of bloodthirsty and draconian when it comes to how brutally they want to see “criminals” be punished. Republicans have ratcheted this up lately with calling for the death penalty for crimes that do not involve murdering someone and even many Democrats are terrified that they will lose elections if they don’t appear to be “tough on crime.”
The Right doesn’t care when it’s poor people, when it’s people of color, when it’s people with serious mental health issues, when it’s people they’d otherwise write off. They do care, or at least pretend to, when those people are their own.
These are among the harshest charges that January 6 people have been convicted of. And if Republican politicians want to do anything to “save” these people from such harsh punishment, they’re very likely going to have to enact some reforms that benefit other people as well. And that benefits all of us.
OPEN THREAD.
Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.
Wonkette is independent and fully funded by readers like you. Click below to tip us!
