WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and four lieutenants charged with seditious conspiracy in the Capitol attack “took aim at the heart of our democracy” on Jan. 6, 2021, a federal prosecutor told jurors on Thursday as their high-profile trial opened in Washington.
Jurors began hearing attorneys’ opening statements more than two years after members of the far-right extremist group joined a pro-Donald Trump mob in attacking the Capitol.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason McCullough said the Proud Boys knew that the prospects of a second term in office for Trump were quickly fading as Jan. 6 approached. So the group leaders assembled a “fighting force” to stop the transfer of power to Joe Biden, McCullough said. Tarrio saw a Biden presidency as a “threat to the Proud Boys’ existence,” the prosecutor said.
The trial comes on the heels of the seditious conspiracy convictions of two leaders of the Oath Keepers, another far-right extremist group. Several other Oath Keepers members were charged with plotting to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from Trump, a Republican, to Biden, a Democrat.
