‘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

US warplanes transit through UK as Trump considers striking Iran

Published

12 hours ago

June 21, 2025

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US warplanes transit through UK as Trump considers striking Iran

Flight tracking data shows extensive movement of US military aircraft towards the Middle East in recent days, including via the UK.

Fifty-two US military planes were spotted flying over the eastern Mediterranean towards the Middle East between Monday and Thursday.

That includes at least 25 that passed through Chania airport, on the Greek island of Crete – an eight-fold increase in the rate of arrivals compared to the first half of June.

The movement of military equipment comes as the US considers whether to assist Israel in its conflict with Iran.

Of the 52 planes spotted over the eastern Mediterranean, 32 are used for transporting troops or cargo, 18 are used for mid-air refuelling and two are reconnaissance planes.

Forbes McKenzie, founder of McKenzie Intelligence, says that this indicates “the build-up of warfighting capability, which was not [in the region] before”.

Sky’s data does not include fighter jets, which typically fly without publicly revealing their location.

An air traffic control recording from Wednesday suggests that F-22 Raptors are among the planes being sent across the Atlantic, while 12 F-35 fighter jets were photographed travelling from the UK to the Middle East on Wednesday.

Many US military planes are passing through UK

A growing number of US Air Force planes have been passing through the UK in recent days.

Analysis of flight tracking data at three key air bases in the UK shows 63 US military flights landing between 16 and 19 June – more than double the rate of arrivals earlier in June.

On Thursday, Sky News filmed three US military C-17A Globemaster III transport aircraft and a C-130 Hercules military cargo plane arriving at Glasgow’s Prestwick Airport.

Flight tracking data shows that one of the planes arrived from an air base in Jordan, having earlier travelled there from Germany.

What does Israel need from US?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on 15 March that his country’s aim is to remove “two existential threats – the nuclear threat and the ballistic missile threat”.

Israel says that Iran is attempting to develop a nuclear bomb, though Iran says its nuclear facilities are only for civilian energy purposes.

A US intelligence assessment in March concluded that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. President Trump dismissed the assessment on Tuesday, saying: “I think they were very close to having one.”

Forbes McKenzie says the Americans have a “very similar inventory of weapons systems” to the Israelis, “but of course, they also have the much-talked-about GBU-57”.

The GBU-57 is a 30,000lb bomb – the largest non-nuclear bomb in existence. Mr McKenzie explains that it is “specifically designed to destroy targets which are very deep underground”.

Experts say it is the only weapon with any chance of destroying Iran’s main enrichment site, which is located underneath a mountain at Fordow.

Air-to-air refuelling could allow Israel to carry larger bombs

Among the dozens of US aircraft that Sky News tracked over the eastern Mediterranean in recent days, more than a third (18 planes) were designed for air-to-air refuelling.

“These are crucial because Israel is the best part of a thousand miles away from Iran,” says Sky News military analyst Sean Bell.

“Most military fighter jets would struggle to do those 2,000-mile round trips and have enough combat fuel.”

The ability to refuel mid-flight would also allow Israeli planes to carry heavier munitions, including bunker-buster bombs necessary to destroy the tunnels and silos where Iran stores many of its missiles.

Satellite imagery captured on 15 June shows the aftermath of Israeli strikes on a missile facility near the western city of Kermanshah, which destroyed at least 12 buildings at the site.

At least four tunnel entrances were also damaged in the strikes, two of which can be seen in the image below.

Writing for Jane’s Defence Weekly, military analyst Jeremy Binnie says it looked like the tunnels were “targeted using guided munitions coming in at angles, not destroyed from above using penetrator bombs, raising the possibility that the damage can be cleared, enabling any [missile launchers] trapped inside to deploy”.

“This might reflect the limited payloads that Israeli aircraft can carry to Iran,” he adds.

Penetrator bombs, also known as bunker-busters, are much heavier than other types of munitions and as a result require more fuel to transport.

Israel does not have the latest generation of refuelling aircraft, Mr Binnie says, meaning it is likely to struggle to deploy a significant number of penetrator bombs.

Israel has struck most of Iran’s western missile bases

Even without direct US assistance, the Israeli air force has managed to inflict significant damage on Iran’s missile launch capacity.

Sky News has confirmed Israeli strikes on at least five of Iran’s six known missile bases in the west of the country.

On Monday, the IDF said that its strategy of targeting western launch sites had forced Iran to rely on its bases in the centre of the country, such as Isfahan – around 1,500km (930 miles) from Israel.

Among Iran’s most advanced weapons are three types of solid-fuelled rockets fitted with highly manoeuvrable warheads: Fattah-1, Kheibar Shekan and Haj Qassam.

The use of solid fuel makes these missiles easy to transport and fast to launch, while their manoeuvrable warheads make them better at evading Israeli air defences. However, none of them are capable of striking Israel from such a distance.

Iran is known to possess five types of missile capable of travelling more than 1,500km, but only one of these uses solid fuel – the Sijjil-1.

On 18 June, Iran claimed to have used this missile against Israel for the first time.

Iran’s missiles have caused significant damage

Iran’s missile attacks have killed at least 24 people in Israel and wounded hundreds, according to the Israeli foreign ministry.

The number of air raid alerts in Israel has topped 1,000 every day since the start of hostilities, reaching a peak of 3,024 on 15 June.

Iran has managed to strike some government buildings, including one in the city of Haifa on Friday.

And on 13 June, in Iran’s most notable targeting success so far, an Iranian missile impacted on or near the headquarters of Israel’s defence ministry in Tel Aviv.

Most of the Iranian strikes verified by Sky News, however, have hit civilian targets. These include residential buildings, a school and a university.

On Thursday, one missile hit the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, southern Israel’s main hospital. More than 70 people were injured, according to Israel’s health ministry.

Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said that Iran had struck a nearby technology park containing an IDF cyber defence training centre, and that the “blast wave caused superficial damage to a small section” of the hospital.

However, the technology park is in fact 1.2km away from where the missile struck.

Photos of the hospital show evidence of a direct hit, with a large section of one building’s roof completely destroyed.

Iran successfully struck the technology park on Friday, though its missile fell in an open area, causing damage to a nearby residential building but no casualties.

Israel has killed much of Iran’s military leadership

It’s not clear exactly how many people Israel’s strikes in Iran have killed, or how many are civilians. Estimates by human rights groups of the total number of fatalities exceed 600.

What is clear is that among the military personnel killed are many key figures in the Iranian armed forces, including the military’s chief of staff, deputy head of intelligence and deputy head of operations.

Key figures in the powerful Revolutionary Guard have also been killed, including the militia’s commander-in-chief, its aerospace force commander and its air defences commander.

On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that US assistance was not necessary for Israel to win the war.

“We will achieve all our objectives and hit all of their nuclear facilities,” he said. “We have the capability to do that.”

Forbes McKenzie says that while Israel has secured significant victories in the war so far, “they only have so much fuel, they only have so many munitions”.

“The Americans have an ability to keep up the pace of operations that the Israelis have started, and they’re able to do it for an indefinite period of time.”

Additional reporting by data journalist Joely Santa Cruz and OSINT producers Freya Gibson, Lina-Sirine Zitout and Sam Doak.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

US

Trump’s two-week timeline: What next for Iran?

Published

18 hours ago

June 20, 2025

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Trump's two-week timeline: What next for Iran?

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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has said Donald Trump will make a decision on whether to militarily strike Iran in the next two weeks. That’s as diplomatic talks between Western governments and the Iranians ramp up.

In today’s episode, US correspondents Mark Stone and Martha Kelner unpick why the delay might be, and the competing voices in the ears of the president.

If you’ve got a question you’d like the Trump100 team to answer, you can email it to trump100@sky.uk.

Don’t forget, you can also watch all episodes on our YouTube channel.

US

Trump’s update on Iran timeline is significant – but it still keeps everyone guessing

Published

18 hours ago

June 20, 2025

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Trump's update on Iran timeline is significant - but it still keeps everyone guessing

This is the most significant statement from the US president in days, though it still keeps everyone guessing.

In a message conveyed through his press secretary, he is giving diplomacy up to two weeks to work.

“Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks,” Karoline Leavitt quoted him as saying.

It is not clear what “whether or not to go” entails.

Israel-Iran conflict: Latest updates

We know that he has been given a spectrum of different military options by his generals and we know that the Israelis are pressuring him to use American B2 bombers with their bunker-busting bombs to destroy Iran’s nuclear facility at Fodow.

The Israelis are encouraging no delay. But against that, he is weighing up many risks, both military and political.

Militarily, it is not clear how successful a bunker-busting strike on Fordow would be.

Experts have suggested it would require several of the massive bombs, which have never been used in combat before, to be dropped on the site.

It is not as simple as one clean strike and job done.

Politically, the president is under significant pressure domestically not to get involved in Iran.

Within his own MAGA coalition – influencers, politicians and media personalities are lining up in criticism of involvement in the conflict.

One of those leading the criticism, his former chief strategist Steve Bannon, who maintains huge influence, was seen entering the White House on Thursday.

His press secretary reiterated to us that the president always wants to give diplomacy a chance and she confirmed that his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff has spoken to the Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi.

European leaders, including the UK foreign secretary David Lammy, who is in Washington, are meeting Mr Araghchi in Geneva on Friday.

The two-week window – assuming it lasts that long – also gives space to better prepare for any strike and mitigate against some of the other risks of US involvement.

There are 40,000 troops in bases across the Middle East. It takes time to increase security at these bases or to move non-essential personnel out. It also takes time to move strategic military assets into the region.

The USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and its support vessels were redeployed from the Indo-Pacific on Monday. Their last known position was the Strait of Malacca two days ago.

The Nimitz Carrier Group will overlap with the USS Carl Vinson group which was deployed to the Middle East in March.

The potential two-week window also allows for more time for a ‘day after’ plan, given that the Israeli strategy appears to be regime change from within.

Since the Israeli action in Iran began last week, the worst-case scenario of mass casualties in Israel from Iranian attacks has not materialised.

The president is said to be surprised and encouraged by this. “Israel has exceeded a lot of people’s expectations in their abilities,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

The Israeli success, the absence of a mass casualty event in Israel, and the lack of any sustained counterattack by Iranian proxies in the region remove reservations that previous presidents have had about taking on Iran.

That said, sources have told Sky News that the president is determined that the diplomatic solution should be given a chance despite current pessimism over the chances of success.

A critical two weeks ahead.