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Those videos are part of a mountain of unflattering evidence that prosecutors have used to take fresh shots at the group’s leaders after two co-defendants took the risky step to testify, reinforcing the government’s contention that the men engaged in a seditious conspiracy to violently thwart the 2020 presidential election results.
Federal defendants rarely testify at trial, knowing skilled cross-examiners will draw out testimony highlighting their worst behavior. Often defendants put on no case at all. But the Proud Boys promised through attorneys that they would show jurors the truth about Jan. 6, while asserting the government offered a misleading view.
“You will see from witness after defense witness that these individuals did not see … anyone planning to storm the Capitol despite being in close proximity to them in the days around Jan. 6,” Nicholas Smith, representing Ethan Nordean, said in his opening statement.
But under government cross-examination, the Proud Boys witnesses have been made to appear evasive and unreliable, potentially undermining defendants’ attempts to sway jurors from prosecutors’ theory of the case.
More Proud Boys members testified for the defense than for the government, including one who has pleaded guilty to a crime and another who on Jan. 6 was an FBI informant. As Smith promised, all of them said they heard nothing about stopping the vote count or otherwise blocking Joe Biden from taking office. That testimony was not contradicted by two Proud Boys testifying for the government, who told jurors the group had a shared goal but no specific plan.
But defense witnesses went further, hoping to counter what Rehl dismissively referred to as “state of mind.” To prove a seditious conspiracy, prosecutors must show the defendants had plans to use violence to oppose federal authority or to keep President Donald Trump in power. Rehl and others insisted on the stand that the Proud Boys tried to avoid violence and did not want to stop the political process.
“Political violence in the streets is actually an unintended consequence when temperatures get too high,” Rehl testified. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, there’s no violence.”
The government was allowed to rebut that “choirboy image,” as one prosecutor called it, with more evidence that the Proud Boys celebrated violence.
Longtime Proud Boys chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, Joseph Biggs and Dominic Pezzola are also on trial with Rehl and Nordean.
Their attorneys complained that U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly gave prosecutors too much leeway to show jurors inflammatory comments made in group chats by anonymous members. The defense has also expressed frustration at the sheer amount of material prosecutors can draw from — tens of thousands of texts and videos, with more added mid-trial.
When the trial took a four-day weekend in the middle of Rehl’s testimony, prosecutors say they found two new videos showing Rehl spraying a chemical substance at police. Rehl refused to identify himself in the video, saying he could not be sure the man identified by prosecutors was he. But if it was, he testified, he was carrying a camera, not chemical spray. Asked directly if he pepper-sprayed police officers outside the Capitol, Rehl responded, “Not that I recall.”
“It’s a really grainy video,” Rehl said. “I did not assault anyone.”
Rehl’s attorney, Carmen Hernandez, said she had not had time to watch and evaluate the videos or to look at all the evidence the government had handed over.
“There has not been enough time,” she said, for her as a single “court-appointed lawyer” to keep up with a team of five prosecutors backed by FBI agents.
Rehl became visibly agitated on the stand as he tried to explain his endorsement of violent rhetoric and actions in messages shown by the government, describing it as “trolling” or “all about getting followers.”
He called the video of the woman being punched “horrible” and “a bad look” for the group. “A woman got hit, and that’s a hard thing to try to defend to the public,” he said, but as a Proud Boys leader he considered it his job to spin the incident as positive.
“We were defending ourselves,” he said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Erik Kenerson noted that a public relations offensive did not explain why Rehl sent the punching video to his mother with the message, “Enjoy!”
Prosecutors also made Rehl confront his comments from Jan. 7, 2021, in which he lamented that rioters had not brought firearms to the Capitol and refused to leave. He argued that wishing there had been such a violent plan indicated that there wasn’t one: “All this shoulda-woulda-coulda stuff is actually proof of things we didn’t do.” He also said that as he saw more footage of the riot, he came to see it as “a disgrace” and regretted his own participation, which included smoking inside a senator’s office.
“I shouldn’t have went into the building and I shouldn’t have smoked a cigarette in there,” he testified. “I didn’t think I’d get charged nine felonies for it.”
Rehl followed several other defense witnesses who were strident in direct testimony but wobbled under cross-examination.
Fernando Alonso, a member from Tarrio’s Vice City, Fla. chapter, testified that he “would have quit the club” if anyone “implied that we were going to storm the Capitol.”
But in a Dec. 24, 2020, Telegram chat, when another member asked, “When do we start stacking bodies on the white house lawn?” Alonso replied, “Jan 7.” He insisted that was “locker room talk” but he was “not alluding to anything violent.” He also claimed that when he sent other Proud Boys a mid-riot message with the song lyrics, “Let the bodies hit the floor,” he was warning that if “unarmed people … rush police officers” they would get hurt.
“It was pretty extreme to go past the police,” Alonso testified — something four of the five men on trial did, as seen on video shown to the jury. Tarrio was not at the Capitol that day; he had been arrested two days prior in the burning of a church’s Black Lives Matter flag and ordered to stay away from Washington.
Alonso ended his testimony by questioning why no antifascists were on trial.
George Meza, a controversial rabbi from the same Florida chapter, said he went on the Capitol steps only as part of a Proud Boys plan to protect other Trump supporters.
“We don’t think it’s fair that someone who just wants to support their political candidate should be bullied or threatened,” he testified.
Shown video of himself in the middle of a violent push against police on those steps, Meza described the melee as “officers who are being thanked for doing their job, and who are being sprayed by other officers.” Afterward prosecutors played a video Meza recorded soon after Jan. 6, calling the riot “glorious … the most patriotic act,” and Ashli Babbitt “our hero.” Meza acknowledged on the witness stand, “That’s how I feel.”
Another Proud Boys member — an FBI informant from Kansas City who marched with the group to the U.S. Capitol — testified that the group had no role in sparking the riot and told jurors he said as much to government agents at the time.
But the informant was forced to acknowledge that he had not told the FBI the whole truth about his own involvement. And his testimony gave prosecutors an opening to introduce videos of bat-wielding, body-armored rioters marching with the Proud Boys that Kelly had previously deemed inadmissible.
Defense witnesses also gave prosecutors the opportunity to introduce messages where Rehl and other Proud Boys insulted police and disabled people.
The two previous Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy trials offer mixed guidance. Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes testified in his own defense and was found guilty on all charges. But two co-defendants also took the stand and were acquitted of the most serious charge. At a second Oath Keepers trial, no defendants testified and all were found guilty of seditious conspiracy.
Rather than put on any witnesses, Biggs’s attorney Norm Pattis played a recording of a Dec. 30, 2020, video meeting of the “Ministry of Self-Defense” or MOSD. The goal was to back up the defense contention that the MOSD was created not to plot political violence, as prosecutors allege, but to keep unruly Proud Boys in line.
All the defendants, except Pezzola, took part in the 97-minute discussion during which leaders repeatedly said they were organizing for self-defense and not looking for conflict.
“We’re going to be the ones standing back,” Tarrio says. “We just chill.” Prosecutors have pointed to encrypted leadership chats where the leader was more combative.
But the unedited recording also exposed jurors to ugly rhetoric that defense attorneys worked hard to keep out of evidence, including crude jokes about Jewish people and women. At one point Tarrio tells the group to “stay away from Black churches,” a reference to the flag-burning. Defendants had fought to keep the details of that incident out of the trial.
This story has been updated.
