The far-right Proud Boys believed they were a "fighting force" led by former president Donald Trump when they stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, federal prosecutors told a jury at the close of the seditious conspiracy charges of five militia leaders.
Assistant U.S. attorney Conor Mulroe gave closing arguments in the trial of Proud Boys chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and four other group leaders, saying the right-wing militants were awaiting orders from the deposed ex-president and were prepared for "all-out war," reported the Washington Post.
“These defendants saw themselves as Donald Trump’s army, fighting to keep their preferred leader in power,” Mulroe told jurors. “To these defendants, politics was no longer something for the debating floor or the voting booth. For them, politics means actual, physical combat.”
The arguments are expected to last over two days to finish a 14-week trial alleging that Tarrio and Proud Boys leaders Ethan Nordean, Joe Biggs and Zachary Rehl promoted a "constant drumbeat" of violent action ahead of the Capitol riot and recruited and radicalized another defendant, Dominic Pezzola -- who used a stolen police shield to shatter the first window to be breached.
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“They made it plain as day why they were there,” Mulroe said. “It was not to see Donald Trump’s speech. It was not to protect patriots. It was certainly not to protest peacefully. They were there to threaten and if necessary to stop the certification of the election, and that was what they did.”
Prosecutors say Tarrio, who was arrested Jan. 4, 2021, on unrelated charges and expelled from Washington, D.C., was in contact with Trump's "Stop the Steal" organizers and understood that some of the former president's supporters could explode into violence, and they showed evidence that Tarrio and his co-conspirators took credit for storming the Capitol as lawmakers certified the presidential election results.
“Unspoken or implicit conspiracies are still conspiracies,” Mulroe told jurors. “You know that their goal was to stop the certification of the election. You know because that’s exactly what they did together, and because they celebrated afterwards what they had accomplished.”
