‘Raise the black flag’: How four Proud Boys secretly planned to overthrow American democracy

Published

2 years ago

August 30, 2023

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“No quarter. Raise the black flag.”

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.

The sentencing comes the same month as Mr Trump was charged in the US state of Georgia with trying to illegally overturn the 2020 election.

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?

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.”

US

In pictures: Memorable moments between the royals and US presidents

Published

2 hours ago

September 16, 2025

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In pictures: Memorable moments between the royals and US presidents

American presidents have travelled to Britain to meet the Royal Family for more than 100 years.

Donald Trump will meet King Charles for the second time when he arrives in Windsor on Wednesday, having been hosted by the late Queen Elizabeth II on his previous state visit during his first term.

For the King, it will be the first time he welcomes a US president as monarch.

Some presidents’ visits have run more smoothly than others. Here, we look back at some of the most memorable.

Woodrow Wilson was the first US president to visit the Royal Family while in office, making the long journey on SS Washington in December 1918 – weeks after the First World War came to an end.

Arriving in London on Boxing Day, thousands of people lined the route to Buckingham Palace, where he appeared on the balcony alongside King George V and Queen Mary after chants of “we want Wilson” from the crowd.

King George VI also made history when he met Franklin D Roosevelt, after becoming the first reigning British monarch to travel to the US in June 1939.

People flocked to greet him and the Queen Mother as they rode through the streets of Washington DC. After state dinner formalities at the White House, they travelled to New York, where they enjoyed a more relaxed hot dog picnic in Hyde Park.

Harry Truman was the first US president to meet Queen Elizabeth – while she was still a princess in 1951.

Seven years after she took the throne, Dwight D Eisenhower met her at Balmoral, where a young Princess Anne and Prince Charles were pictured alongside him, wearing kilts.

John F Kennedy met the then-35-year-old Queen Elizabeth in June 1961, just six months into his presidency.

A state banquet was held at Buckingham Palace, with the glamorous visit dramatised in the Netflix series The Crown.

Just two years later, on 22 November 1963, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

Gerald Ford didn’t visit the UK during his two-and-a-half years in office, but the Queen met him on a visit to the US in July 1976.

The pair danced together at a White House state dinner, but with unfortunate timing, the band played The Lady Is A Tramp just as the Queen took to the floor – a now infamous faux pas.

Jimmy Carter met the late Queen at Buckingham Palace in May 1977.

His more memorable interaction was with the Queen Mother, however, when he abandoned protocol and greeted her with a kiss on the lips.

According to biographer William Shawcross, she later wrote: “I took a sharp step backwards – not quite far enough.”

Among the most memorable meetings of a British monarch and a US president was that of Ronald Reagan and the late Queen.

When he came to Windsor Castle in 1982, the pair were famously pictured riding horses together in the grounds.

He met her a further three times in London throughout the 1980s and she gave him an honorary knighthood when he left the White House in 1989.

George HW Bush, wasted no time in making the Queen’s acquaintance, travelling to the UK in May 1989, just five months after he was sworn in.

There were a few red faces when Her Majesty travelled to the US to visit him a year later.

As she stood up to give a speech on the White House lawn, she was partially obscured behind a cluster of microphones that had been arranged for the much taller Mr Bush. He later reassured reporters that the Queen laughed off the incident.

George W Bush‘s state visit in November 2003 was met with huge protests over the Iraq War. Tens of thousands of people crowded into Trafalgar Square, where an effigy of the president was toppled by demonstrators.

The protests did not appear to affect the ‘special relationship’, however, with the Queen visiting the US to meet Mr Bush in 2007, and him returning to the UK to see her a year later.

Barack Obama first met the Queen on a visit to the UK in 2009 when his wife, First Lady Michelle, made headlines for breaking royal protocol and giving Her Majesty a hug.

The Obamas received the full pomp of an official state visit in May 2011.

They visited a final time during the president’s second term in April 2016, when Marine One landed in the grounds of Windsor Castle and the royal couple walked to greet them.

Donald Trump first met the King while he was still Prince of Wales in December 2019, when his mother hosted a state visit to mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day.

His trip was met with huge protests in London, which memorably featured a giant ‘blimp’ that depicted him as a baby.

Despite being accused of breaching royal protocol on several occasions, he described the Queen as an “incredible woman” in one of his speeches.

When Joe Biden visited Windsor Castle in June 2021 it was the first time the Queen had met a head of state alone – following the death of her husband Prince Philip.

It was also the first state visit of any foreign leader after the coronavirus pandemic saw Her Majesty halt royal duties and quarantine at Windsor as part of ‘HMS Bubble’.

US

Hollywood actor and director Robert Redford dies at 89

Published

4 hours ago

September 16, 2025

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Hollywood actor and director Robert Redford dies at 89

Hollywood actor and Oscar-winning director Robert Redford, known for films including Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, All The President’s Men and The Sting, has died at the age of 89.

Redford, who was also the founder of the Sundance Film Festival, the largest independent film festival in the US, died on Tuesday morning.

In a statement, his representative said he was “surrounded by those he loved”, at home in “the place he loved” in the mountains of Utah. “He will be missed greatly,” she added.

Born Charles Robert Redford Jr in Santa Monica, California, in 1936, he attended college on a baseball scholarship but later went on to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

He debuted on Broadway in the late 1950s before moving into television, in shows such as The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Untouchables.

Rising to stardom in the 1960s, Redford became a go-to leading man in Hollywood and a huge star of the following decade, leading films including The Candidate, All the President’s Men and The Way We Were.

He worked hard to transcend being typecast for his good looks, through his political advocacy and a willingness to take on unglamorous roles.

In the 1990s and 2000s, his film credits included Indecent Proposal, The Last Castle and Spy Game, and he also worked actively as a filmmaker – helming movies including A River Runs Through It and The Legend Of Bagger Vance. In 1998, he both starred in and directed The Horse Whisperer.

But he was best known for his role as wily outlaw the Sundance Kid, opposite Paul Newman’s Butch Cassidy in the 1969 film. The pair became a famous screen partnership, starring opposite each other again in The Sting a few years later, and good friends.

As well as his starring roles, Redford was also an activist and an accomplished filmmaker – winning the Oscar for best director for Ordinary People in 1981. It was the second of his two Academy Awards – the first won for his acting performance in The Sting – as well as an honorary prize in 2002.

In a career spanning seven decades, he also received three Golden Globe Awards, including the Cecil B DeMille lifetime achievement honor in 1994.

In his later years, Redford took on a challenging role in All Is Lost, a 2013 survival story that featured virtually no other characters and barely any dialogue. His performance earned a standing ovation after the film was screened at the Cannes Film Festival.

In 2018, he received critical acclaim again in what he called his farewell movie, The Old Man And The Gun.

His legacy lives on in the Sundance Film Festival, which grew into a cornerstone of the film industry and provided a launching pad for filmmakers including Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Soderbergh, Gina Prince-Bythewood and Darren Aronofsky.

And in 2016, former President Barack Obama awarded him the presidential medal of freedom – considered the US government’s highest civilian honour – saying at the time that Americans “admire Bob not just for his remarkable acting, but for having figured out what to do next”.

Robert Redford leaves behind his wife Sibylle Szaggars and two daughters – Shauna, a painter, and Amy, an actress and director.

He was previously married to Lola Van Wagenen. One of their children, Scott, died at the age of two months from sudden infant death syndrome. Another, James, died of cancer in 2020.

‘One of the lions has passed’

Tributes have been shared across social media following the announcement of Redford’s death.

Meryl Streep, who starred in Out Of Africa and Lions For Lambs opposite Redford, said: “One of the lions has passed. Rest in peace my lovely friend.”

Filmmaker Ron Howard, known for Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind, described Redford as “a tremendously influential cultural figure for the creative choices” he made as an actor, producer and director, and said Sundance had been a “gamechanger”.

Marlee Matlin, star of the Oscar-winning CODA, said the film “came to the attention of everyone” because of the Sundance Festival.

“Sundance happened because of Robert Redford. A genius has passed,” she said.

“He was part of a new and exciting Hollywood in the 70s and 80s,” wrote author Stephen King. “Hard to believe he was 89.”

Spencer Cox, the governor of Utah, wrote: “Decades ago, Robert Redford came to Utah and fell in love with this place.

“He cherished our landscapes and built a legacy that made Utah a home for storytelling and creativity.

“Through Sundance and his devotion to conservation, he shared Utah with the world. Today we honor his life, his vision, and his lasting contribution to our state.”

US

Trump sues New York Times

Published

12 hours ago

September 16, 2025

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Donald Trump has announced he’s suing The New York Times, just days after he threatened to do so over its reporting into his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, the US president said he had “the Great Honor of bringing a $15bn Defamation and Libel Lawsuit” against “one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the History of our Country”.

Mr Trump’s lengthy post – made late on Monday – is focused on his belief the outlet is bias towards the Democrats, citing the endorsement of Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election.

It has “been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long”, he added.

The lawsuit – which has been brought in Florida – comes after Mr Trump raised the prospect of suing the newspaper last week for publishing articles about alleged notes he had sent Epstein.

He dismissed the reporting as false.

A lewd birthday message Trump allegedly sent to the convicted sex offender for his 50th birthday in 2003 was published by the US Congress days later.

The pages are contained in files from the estate of the deceased billionaire paedophile, handed over to a Congressional committee.

The collection of birthday tributes include a hand-drawing of a woman’s body, signed “Donald”. They also contain a picture of Epstein holding an outsized cheque, signed by “DJTRUMP”.

Mr Trump has maintained the note wasn’t written by him, claiming the handwriting and signature do not match his own.

The “birthday book” also included notes from former British minister Peter Mandelson, who has been sacked as the UK’s ambassador to the US over revelations about his relationship with Epstein.

Mr Trump has repeatedly denied any impropriety involving Epstein, whom he once counted as a friend.

Responding to his initial threat to sue, a spokeswoman for The New York Times said last week: “Our journalists reported the facts, provided the visual evidence and printed the president’s denial. It’s all there for the American people to see and to make up their own minds about.

“We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favour and stand up for journalists’ First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.”