The proud boys12/16/2023 ![]() “It’s easier to blame … the Proud Boys,” Jauregui added, saying his client and his fellow co-defendants were mere “scapegoats”. Meanwhile, an attorney representing Tarrio, Sabino Jauregui, argued that his client and the others were simply on trial because “it’s too hard to blame Trump,” whose full-throated defense to any prosecution would be mounted by an “army of lawyers”. An attorney for Rehl, Carmen Hernandez, has insisted that her client went to the nation’s capital on 6 January not to riot but to exercise his free speech rights in protest of Trump’s loss to Biden. Tarrio and his four co-defendants have pleaded not guilty to their alleged roles in the attack, which has been linked to nine deaths, including the suicides of law enforcement officers who protected the Capitol and were left traumatized. ![]() ![]() Tarrio and his fellow self-described “western chauvinists” believed a Democratic Biden presidency would threaten the group’s very existence, therefore they engaged in seditious conspiracy, headed a mob that forced its way into the Capitol and tried to drive a stake through “the heart of our democracy”, prosecutor Jason McCullough contended. Weeks after the seditious conspiracy convictions of two leaders of the Oath Keepers – another far-right group – in connection with the Capitol attack, prosecutors in the Proud Boys case have broadly asserted that Tarrio, Zachary Rehl, Ethan Nordean, Dominic Pezzola and Joseph Biggs mustered up a “fighting force” to halt Biden from ever assuming the presidency. They do so even as the strategy has not proven effective in other cases where it has been suggested that it is really Trump who is culpable for the Capitol attack – not his less powerful sycophants and camp followers. Why have prosecutors so far only focused their energy on the supporters of Donald Trump who are accused of a coordinated invasion of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the congressional certification of his defeat to Joe Biden in the previous year’s presidential election? Is it because they regard the former Republican president himself – who urged his supporters to “fight like hell” that deadly day – as too formidable and them as easier targets?Īttorneys for the ex-Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and four of his lieutenants have sought to ingrain that question in the minds of jurors chosen after a particularly turbulent selection process which began last month and gave way to opening arguments and witness testimony beginning 12 January.
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