In a development that will be worrisome, if unsurprising, to free speech advocates, the Proud Boys trial jury delivered convictions for all defendants. Most unnerving is the conviction of Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy despite the fact that he wasn’t even present on January 6 and that – to date – there remains practically no evidence that he planned any violence.
Tarrio’s conviction is now leading to widespread speculation that President Donald J. Trump will be the next to be charged by federal prosecutors. That’s because the theory that Tarrio was convicted under is so broad that it easily could be applied to the former president.
As Valiant News explained in an earlier article, seditious conspiracy was a stretch because it requires a conspiracy to – essentially – violently overthrow or cripple the United States government. In the Proud Boys case, this was complicated further by the fact that almost all evidence, even government witnesses, suggested that nobody in the Proud Boys planned to attack the Capitol on January 6 and the Proud Boys themselves seemed quite surprised when the Capitol was breached.
The seditious conspiracy convictions of former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and three lieutenants bolsters the Justice Department and special counsel Jack Smith as they dig into efforts by Donald Trump and allies to undo President Joe Biden’s victory. https://t.co/0XJmR0OUF9
— The Associated Press (@AP) May 5, 2023
The thrust of the government’s seditious conspiracy case was that they did not need to prove a plan, only an “understanding” – even unspoken – “to accomplish an unlawful objective”. In other words, according to the jury instructions – which seem to have very closely hewed to the prosecution’s interpretation – a conspiracy would not need to resemble bank robbers planning a heist, but a flock of geese all flying in the same direction.
They offered two plausible unlawful objectives: to either unlawfully delay the transfer of power to President Joe Biden or oppose the authority of the federal government.
However, both of those “objectives” require an extremely broad and novel reading of the law. The objective of the January 6 Stop The Steal protest was to support the efforts of Republicans on Capitol Hill to officially challenge the certification of the 2020 election. Since that was a legal process, it requires very tenuous logic to claim it was an “unlawful objective” or that violence could have achieved it, especially because none of the Proud Boys were armed with weapons – let alone a plan to use them.
Similarly, if engaging in a riot or, more directly, planning on being part of a peaceful protest that might conceivably turn into a riot could count as “opposing the authority” of the federal government, then practically every activist in the country would be guilty.
The other main charge, conspiracy to disrupt an official proceeding, is also tenuous. It was originally drafted to criminalize the destruction of evidence in advance of federal trials after the Enron scandal, when their auditing firm Arthur Anderson shredded years’ worth of potentially incriminating documents in anticipation of federal charges. In an extremely broad interpretation of that law, January 6 prosecutors contend that protest – even when nonviolent – is a felony when it inconveniences a Congressional hearing.
Civil rights lawyers such as Robert Barnes, Jonathan Turley and Alan Dershowitz have sounded alarms about these broad legal standards being used to put people in prison for years, as well as the possibility that they might be used against President Trump.
“Of course it’s never been done before, because it’s unconstitutional. It violates three provisions in the Constitution,” said Dershowitz on Fox News’ Hannity. “This is a very dangerous thing. It’s not just irrelevant.”
In an interview with Vice News, which was recently rescued from bankruptcy by a group of investors including George Soros, Proud Boys juror Andre Mundell, a 63-year-old retiree, explained that he voted to convict despite all this because of “all the chats.”
Mundell explained that his decision was motivated by the fact that much of the text message record was deleted and he supposed that they must have contained incriminating evidence. He also said that there was “an absence of evidence of standing down.””
“No one says, no, don’t do this. We’re not going to do this. There was none of that. And that was probably because they never said it,” Mundell said. “And the things that were affirming that they were going to be violent. They just kind of let it happen.”
DC juror admits they didn’t have much evidence of a seditious conspiracy but ASSUMED there was more evidence that was deleted. https://t.co/Adi9i8axvx pic.twitter.com/jIUR7a0s3v
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) May 5, 2023
While it may seem confusing that a juror could convict beyond a reasonable doubt based on an absence of evidence, this is in fact entirely consistent with the jury instructions. The jury did not need to find evidence that a plan existed in order to convict; it was enough to conclude from “reasonable inferences” that an “understanding” existed based on the sequence of events and sentiments expressed as well as right-wing memes shared by chat. Judge Kelly’s jury instructions, however, did not provide such a broad interpretation of reasonable doubt.
Enrique Tarrio, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl were convicted of conspiracy to commit sedition and obstruct an official proceeding, among other charges. The jury deadlocked on those charges for Dominic Pezzola, but he was convicted of several other charges.
In her latest column for American Greatness, Julie Kelly (no relation to the judge) – by far the most observant reporter in the nation of January 6 cases – observes that these convictions dovetail perfectly into Special Counsel Jack Smith’s hotly-anticipated prosecution of President Trump.
“The convictions will bolster Special Counsel Jack Smith’s ongoing investigation into Donald Trump for similar charges,” she wrote. “Prosecutors repeatedly mentioned the former president during the trial, citing his comment during a September 2020 presidential debate for Proud Boys to ‘stand back and stand by’ as a call to action.”
