New video shows Proud Boys ignored their own orders against violence during Jan. 6 riot

Newly revealed video shows Proud Boys leaders calling on members to remain orderly and professional during the Jan. 6, 2021, march that turned into the U.S. Capitol riot.

Enrique Tarrio and some of his top lieutenants met Dec. 30, 2020, for a video conference to found the right-wing paramilitary group's Ministry of Self-Defense, and they told group members to remain in a defensive posture for their march the following week and keep "normies" away from them, but that's not what happened, reported the New York Times.

We’re never going to be the ones to cross the police barrier or cross something in order to get to somebody,” Tarrio said.

The extremist group's members played an aggressive and apparently coordinated role in breaking into the Capitol, and Tarrio and several other Proud Boys members have been charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with the deadly riot.

Proud Boys members also repeatedly instigated Donald Trump supporters around them in a tactic that members later described in private messages as “riling up the normies.”

The video conference has been mentioned in court papers but hasn't been widely seen, and the Times obtained a copy recently that had been seized from Tarrio's phone.

Proud Boys lawyers say the video recording shows the Ministry of Self-Defense was not "formed to plan a violent attack on the Capitol," as prosecutors allege, but shows the group was trying “to avoid the chaos and violence” from a Dec. 12, 2020, march in Washington, D.C., following a pro-Trump rally.

However, the video shows group members using flagrantly misogynistic, homophobic and antisemitic language and rarely mention the Capitol at all, and prosecutors say some of the Proud Boys in that meeting used violent language in private messages ahead of the riot.

“Time to stack those bodies in front of Capitol Hill," one of the members posted in a group chat that included other members of the ministry.

“What would they do if 1 million patriots stormed and took the Capitol building," said another member in the group. "Shoot into the crowd? I think not.”