4 Proud Boys found guilty of sedition for Capitol assault
Washington, May 4 (EFE).- Four members of the ultrarightist Proud Boys group, including the group’s former leader Enrique Tarrio, were found guilty on Thursday of conspiring to commit sedition in a plot to attack the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to keep then-President Donald Trump in power despite his losing the 2020 presidential election.
In addition to Tarrio, who is of Cuban origin, the other three Proud Boys who were found guilty are: Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl.
On this charge alone, each of the four men could face up to 20 years in prison.
One additional defendant, Dominic Pezzola, who is still awaiting a unanimous jury verdict on the conspiracy to commit sedition charge, although he was neither a Proud Boys leader nor involved in their discussions regarding staging the attack on the US Capitol.
Even so, the judge hearing the case ordered the jury to keep deliberating on Pezzola’s fate, along with other charges filed against Tarrio, Nordean, Biggs and Rehl.
In addition, the four men convicted on Thursday were also found guilty of obstructing the certification of the results of the November 2020 presidential election, in which Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump, a Republican.
The jury also found all five men guilty of a third charge of conspiring to interfere in the duties of members of Congress on that day.
The verdicts came after the jury had deliberated for seven days in a Washington federal court. The trial was the last of three big sedition cases that federal prosecutors had mounted against key figures in the Capitol attack.
Over the course of the trial, prosecutors displayed messages and videos published by the accused and other members of the Proud boys that called for violence and revolution to head off the transfer of power to Biden. According to the indictment, online messages spoke about the need for “war” and “revolution,” as well as the need to execute traitors.
On Jan. 6, 2021, some 10,000 people – most of the Trump supporters – marched on the Capitol after being stirred up by Trump himself and other key backers in speeches earlier in the day, and some 800 of them broke into the Capitol, when the full Congress had gathered to ratify Biden’s election victory. Five people died and about 140 security and police officers were injured in the violence perpetrated by some of the mob.
EFE ssia/ssa/bp
