Proud Boys leader: Trump caused Jan. 6 attack

Source: Politico | April 25, 2023 | Kyle Cheney

A lawyer for Enrique Tarrio told jurors that prosecutors are using him as a “scapegoat” for the former president.

Former Proud Boys national chair Enrique Tarrio — the man prosecutors have portrayed as the ringleader of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — told jurors Tuesday that he’s merely a scapegoat for the real culprit: Donald Trump.

“It was Donald Trump’s words. It was his motivation. It was his anger that caused what occurred on January 6th in your amazing and beautiful city,” said Nayib Hassan, Tarrio’s lawyer, during closing arguments in a seditious conspiracy trial stemming from the Jan. 6 attack.

Hassan leaned heavily into the role Trump played in ginning up the crowd at his rally the morning of Jan. 6, just minutes before rioters began breaching police barricades at the Capitol. Trump urged his supporters to “fight like hell” just 36 minutes before the first wave of the mob charged at police, Hassan noted.

“It was not Enrique Tarrio. They want to use Enrique Tarrio as a scapegoat for Donald Trump and those in power,” Hassan said.

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Hassan, though, said it was Trump pulling the strings and driving events ahead of Jan. 6 — not Tarrio. He noted that Trump contributed to a surge in Proud Boys recruitment after invoking the group — and urging members to “stand back and stand by” during a televised debate against Biden in September 2020. That membership boom harmed the group’s vetting and led to undisciplined members provoking unconstrained violence and street clashes in Washington in November and December 2020.

That led Tarrio to form a new Proud Boys chapter — dubbed the “Ministry of Self Defense” — to select Proud Boys who could be trusted to follow rules and obey orders. That chapter, which grew to hundreds nationwide, became the core of the group that Tarrio helped assemble in Washington on Jan. 6.

Prosecutors say the Ministry of Self Defense — or MOSD — was really a “fighting force” that Tarrio mobilized to attack the seat of government in service of keeping Trump in power. Hundreds of members joined Proud Boys leaders in Washington and were prominent parts of the crowd that breached the barricades in the first wave of the riot. In numerous cases, Proud Boys in this group were among those who helped topple barricades or tussled with police in ways that helped clear a path for the riot to advance closer to the Capitol.

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