Enrique Tarrio is raging online about President Joe Biden’s election victory. It’s November 2020, a couple of months before the January 6 insurrection.
But Tarrio isn’t just an angry Donald Trump supporter posting on the internet. He’s the leader of the right-wing Proud Boys group with perhaps thousands of members ultimately reporting to him.
He wanted Mr Trump to remain in office, warning of a second civil war. So he and others hatched a plan, one that culminated in the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021.
A series of documents and messages, revealed by prosecutors at trial, shows the lengths they went to: from secret text chains to planning 50-man teams to occupy buildings in the capital.
Tarrio and his associate Ethan Nordean, another senior Proud Boy, will now be sentenced today after being found guilty of seditious conspiracy, a rare charge carrying up to 20 years in prison.
Two others – Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl – will be sentenced tomorrow for the same charge.
Sky News reveals below exactly how the four men planned to overthrow democracy and asks a key question: are the Proud Boys still a threat?
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Image: Rioters outside the US Capitol on January 6. Pic: AP
Trump: ‘Proud Boys, stand back, and stand by’
Formed during the alt-right explosion of 2016, the exclusively-male Proud Boys regard themselves as “Western chauvinists” who “refuse to apologise for creating the modern world”.
Variously described as a street gang, a hate group or “kids who were picked last at kickball”, the Proud Boys have been designated as a terror group in two countries – Canada and New Zealand.
The group’s roots are as a “boys drinking club”, Katherine Keneally, an expert on political violence at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, tells Sky News.
“But what we saw, especially with the emergence of Trump, is this shifted from it being a drinking club to them going out on the streets, particularly at COVID-related protests, racial justice protests, and engaging in violence with protesters.”
As the movement grew, dozens of chapters of the Proud Boys sprang up in the majority of US states.
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0:59
Trump to Proud Boys: ‘Stand back, and stand by’
The watershed moment came in September 2020, and the infamous line from Trump live on television: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.”
This caused an immediate shift in their behaviour, Ms Keneally says, with the group emboldened by the belief that they had support from the President.
“They had already been garnering public support leading up to January 6, and that helped them translate to them actually directing people unaffiliated with the Proud Boys during the insurrection.”
“They viewed themselves as the president’s own military in some respects,” she added.
Image: A Proud Boys jacket at a demonstration near Freedom Plaza in DC. Pic: AP
The plan for January 6
“Fill the buildings with patriots and communicate our demands,” the plan says.
This is the incendiary ‘1776 Returns’ document, a secret Proud Boys internal plan prosecutors say was sent to Tarrio.
Its stated goals include maintaining control “over a select few, but crucial buildings in the DC area for a set period of time” and getting as “many people as possible inside these buildings”.
“These are OUR buildings, they are just renting space,” the document reads. “We must show our politicians We the People are in charge.”
Image: Zachary Rehl (left) and Ethan Nordean (right) on January 6. Pic: AP
The document set out plans in detail for how Proud Boys would occupy buildings, with specialist roles given to leads (“covert sleeper”), “hypeman” and “recruiter”.
“Have leads and seconds open the doors for the crowd to enter,” it says. “This might include causing trouble near the front doors to distract guards who may be holding the doors off.”
Readers are instructed to use COVID-19 to their advantage by wearing face coverings to protect their identities.
Prosecutors say that Tarrio was sent the 1776 Returns document by an unnamed individual, who told him: “The revolution is more important than anything.”
Tarrio responded: “That’s what every waking moment consists of… I’m not playing games.”
Image: Proud Boys members Joseph Biggs (left) and Ethan Nordean (right) walk toward the Capitol. Pic: AP
What happened at the Proud Boys trial?
Tarrio, Nordean, Biggs and Rehl along with a fifth defendant, Dominic Pezzola, were put on trial charged with conspiring to oppose the lawful transfer of presidential power by force (seditious conspiracy) and a number of other charges in relation to January 6.
In his 80-minute opening statement, assistant US attorney Jason McCullough said in the days after the 2020 election the defendants had started “calling for action, calling for war, if their favoured candidate was not elected.”
Alluding to Mr Trump’s remark, the prosecutor added: “They did not stand back. They did not stand by. Instead, they mobilised.”
The indictment laid out how Tarrio, enraged at President Biden’s victory, posted on social media in November 2020: “F*** unity. No quarter. Raise the black flag.”
Associated with military conflict, the phrase ‘no quarter’ suggests that enemy combatants should be killed rather than taken prisoner.
Image: Enrique Tarrio at a rally in Portland, Oregon in 2019. Pic: AP
The jury heard how after the election Tarrio posted on social media that the presidency was being stolen and vowed his group wouldn’t “go quietly”.
Mr McCullough also cited messages from Tarrio on January 6, including: “Make no mistake… We did this.”
“Those are his words, his thoughts, just minutes after Congress had been forced to stop its work,” McCullough said. “They did what they’d set out to do.”
And while Tarrio himself wasn’t at the Capitol on the day of the insurrection, he messaged with members throughout the riot, prosecutors said.
‘Their commander-in-chief sold them a lie’
Defence lawyers denied their clients planned or led an attack on the Capitol and suggested they were being targeted for their political beliefs.
Tarrio’s attorney, Sabino Jauregui, told jurors his client was being made a scapegoat because he “wrote and sent a lot of offensive things”.
“Speaking what you think is not illegal in this country yet,” he continued, before he closed with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Rehl’s lawyer, Carmen Hernandez, said her client came to the nation’s capital simply to protest. “I submit to you that Mr Rehl came to DC to exercise his First Amendment rights,” she told the jury.
Nick Smith, a lawyer for Nordean, who led a Proud Boys chapter in Washington state, told jurors they would see no evidence of a “complicated, long-running plot”.
“What you will see in the Telegram chats is a bunch of text messages that are tempting you to find guilt based on your dislike of these people,” he said. “Do not take the bait.”
Image: Proud Boys members Ethan Nordean (left), Zachary Rehl and Joseph Biggs walk toward the US Capitol on January 6. Pic: AP
Norm Pattis, a lawyer for Joe Biggs, said the defendants came to Washington because their “commander-in-chief” told them it would “be wild”, referring to Mr Trump’s infamous tweet that called on supporters to come to Washington on January 6.
“Their commander-in-chief sold them a lie,” he said.
Pezzola’s lawyer, Roger Roots, downplayed the attack on the Capitol, which temporarily halted the counting of Electoral College ballots.
“Believe it or not, this entire case is about a six-hour delay of Congress,” Roots told the jury. “The government makes a big deal out of this six-hour recess.”
Guilty of seditious conspiracy
Tarrio, Biggs, Nordean and Rehl were found guilty of seditious conspiracy and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.
Pezzola was cleared of seditious conspiracy and a jury could not reach an agreement on the charge of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.
Pezzola, who was caught on video smashing in a window with a Capitol Police shield during the riot, was separately charged with stealing the police shield and found guilty.
He was also convicted of assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers, while the four other defendants were acquitted on that charge.
The judge declared a mistrial in respect of various other counts in the trial upon which the jury did not reach conclusions.
Image: Rioters, including Dominic Pezzola (centre) with police shield, inside the Capitol. Pic: AP
How big are the Proud Boys now?
With the next US presidential election barely a year away some are asking if we are likely to see a repeat of the violent scenes of January 6… or another attempt to overturn the result if Mr Trump is not the victor.
Are the Proud Boys still a threat to American democracy?
Their numbers have grown dramatically since 2020, reaching 78 chapters in 2022, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center organisation.
But that may not tell the whole story, as it does not necessarily mean that the number of Proud Boys members has increased, experts say.
“I think many would have expected the Proud Boys to kind of fade away by now,” Colin P Clarke, director of research and an expert on domestic terrorism at the Soufan Group, tells Sky News.
“But there seems to be a real sense of pride in pushing forward with all their different activities, and they’ve positioned themselves as a player in the culture wars more broadly.”
However Colin Beck, a professor at Pomona College and an expert in social movements, said that while the Proud Boys brand may have continued to spread, the amount of support may have decreased.
“There’s now a real cost,” he tells Sky News. “If you go to a Proud Boys event you might end up in jail.
“The US federal government is very good at suppressing protests when it chooses to do so.”
Trump ‘abandoned’ the Proud Boys
Another factor, Katherine Keneally says, is the Proud Boys have in many ways distanced themselves from Mr Trump and feel “betrayed” by him.
She pointed to fears of Proud Boys protests over the indictment of the former president which did not come to pass.
“He wasn’t helping fund their legal efforts. He just sort of abandoned them,” she said. “So there has been this distrust that’s been happening with Trump.”
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1:39
Watch US Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s statement here.
Asked about the future, she doubts there will be a repeat of January 6 as Proud Boys are now focussing much more on local action and running for local office.
“I’m not actually worried about the Proud Boys,” Ms Beck says. “In some ways they’re like the has-beens.”
“It’s who the Proud Boys become next…what is the group that emerges?
“Because all the people who are adherents or sympathetic, they don’t go away. They just move on to something else.”
Mr Clarke raised the idea the Proud Boys could act as a “feeder” or “preparatory school” for more extreme groups.
Asked how likely a repeat of the Capitol insurrection is if a Democrat wins in 2024, Mr Clarke said: “We have to learn from January 6 that when these guys say that they’re going to do something, we have to take them seriously and prepare for it.”
Mature, developed economies like the UK and US became ever more reliant on cheap imports from China and, in the process, saw their manufacturing sectors shrink.
Large swathes of the rust belt in the US – and much of the Midlands and North of England – were hollowed out.
And to some extent that’s where the story of Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” really began – with the notion that free trade and globalisation had a darker side, a side he wants to remedy via tariffs.
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Trump’s tariffs: Ed Conway analysis
He imposed a set of tariffs in his first term, some on China, some on specific materials like steel and aluminium. But the height and the breadth of those tariffs were as nothing compared with the ones we have just heard about.
Not since the 1930s has the US so radically increased the level of tariffs on all nations across the world. Back then, those tariffs exacerbated the Great Depression.
It’s anyone’s guess as to what the consequences of these ones will be. But there will be consequences.
Consequences for the nature of globalisation, consequences for the US economy (tariffs are exceptionally inflationary), consequences for geopolitics.
Image: Imports from the UK will face a 10% tariff, while EU goods will see 20% rates. Pic: Reuters
And to some extent, merely knowing that little bit more about the White House’s plans will deliver a bit of relief to financial markets, which have fretted for months about the imposition of tariffs. That uncertainty recently reached unprecedented levels.
But don’t for a moment assume that this saga is over. Nothing of the sort. In the coming days, we will learn more – more about the nuts and bolts of these policies, more about the retaliatory measures coming from other countries.
We will, possibly, get more of a sense about whether some countries – including the UK – will enjoy reprieves from the tariffs.
To paraphrase Churchill, this isn’t the end of the trade war, or even the beginning of the end – perhaps just the end of the beginning.
Actors, directors and celebrity friends have paid tribute to Val Kilmer, after he died aged 65.
The California-born star of Top Gun, Batman and Heat died of pneumonia on Tuesday night in Los Angeles, his daughter Mercedes told the Associated Press.
She said Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 but later recovered.
Tributes flooded in after reports broke of the actor’s death, with No Country For Old Men star Josh Brolin among the first to share their memories.
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Watch: Val Kilmer in his most iconic roles
He wrote on Instagram: “See ya, pal. I’m going to miss you. You were a smart, challenging, brave, uber-creative firecracker. There’s not a lot left of those.
“I hope to see you up there in the heavens when I eventually get there. Until then, amazing memories, lovely thoughts.”
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Kyle Maclachlan, who co-starred with Kilmer in the 1991 biopic The Doors, wrote on social media: “You’ll always be my Jim. See you on the other side my friend.”
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Michael Mann, who directed Kilmer in 1995’s Heat, also paid tribute in a statement, saying: “I always marvelled at the range, the brilliant variability within the powerful current of Val’s possessing and expressing character.
“After so many years of Val battling disease and maintaining his spirit, this is tremendously sad news.”
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Heat co-star Danny Trejo also called Kilmer “a great actor, a wonderful person, and a dear friend of mine” on Instagram.
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Cher, who once dated the actor, said on X that “U Were Funny, crazy, pain in the ass, GREAT FRIEND… BRILLIANT as Mark Twain, BRAVE here during ur sickness”.
Lifelong friend and director of Twixt, Francis Ford Coppola said: “Val Kilmer was the most talented actor when in his High School, and that talent only grew greater throughout his life.
“He was a wonderful person to work with and a joy to know – I will always remember him.”
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The Top Gun account on X also said it was remembering Kilmer, who starred as Iceman in both the 1986 original and 2022 sequel, and “whose indelible cinematic mark spanned genres and generations”.
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Elon Musk has called reports that he will leave his government role in the coming months “fake news”.
A senior White House official previously told NBC News, Sky’s US partner network, that Donald Trump had discussed the Tesla and X boss transitioning back to the private sector at a cabinet meeting last month.
Image: The Tesla boss has headed DOGE since 20 January. File pic: Reuters
After reports emerged of the meeting, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it was “garbage” and added: “Elon Musk and President Trump have both publicly stated that Elon will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at DOGE is complete.”
Mr Musk added in response on X: “Yeah, fake news.”
NBC News reported that the official said Mr Musk would leave at the end of his 130 days as a special government employee.
That would be 30 May, but it is unclear if the billionaire businessman will indeed leave on that date.
Previously, the White House said that as a temporary organisation, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) would be terminated on 4 July next year – the 250th anniversary of the US.
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It comes days after Mr Musk said some members of his DOGE team were getting death threats on a daily basis.
Mr Muskhad drawn criticism over his efforts to downsize the US federal government.
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‘Elon Musk has got to go’
In just weeks, entire agencies were dismantled, and tens of thousands of workers from the 2.3 million federal workforce have been fired or have agreed to leave their jobs.
A number of lawsuits were filed in state and federal courts over cuts recommended by DOGE.