These days, the expression “conspiracy theory” is almost synonymous with “nonsense.” Nonetheless, conspiracies do exist, and new evidence has just emerged of a conspiracy behind the January 6, 2021, attack on the nation’s Capitol. In the New York Times of March 14, 2022, Alan Feuer reported evidence uncovered by prosecutors of one conspiracy leader who urged the attackers on. That person is Enrique Tarrio, then leader of the Proud Boys, who played a crucial role (or thought he could) in the effort to reverse the 2020 election. Tarrio’s past is a checkered one. After being arrested in 2012, he worked as an informant for the FBI in drug, gambling, and human smuggling cases. In 2014 his cooperation with law enforcement was brought forward presumably to mitigate sentencing for his own crimes. By 2015, however, his loyalties had shifted from the FBI to the Proud Boys, a far-right, all male, militia style activist group dedicated, they say, to Western Chauvinism. They participated in the Unite the Right demonstration in Charlottesville VA, on August 11-12, 2017. Tarrio became the group’s leader in 2018.
To appreciate his role in the attack on the Capitol, we must back up a bit.
In the morning of January 6, demonstrators erected a scaffold and a noose on the Mall. By 1:30 PM, assailants overwhelmed badly outnumbered police attempting to protect the Capitol. At 2:12, one attacker broke a window allowing hundreds of armed insurgents to enter. Some chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!” That could not have seemed an idle threat in view of the scaffold outside. At 2:13, Capitol police moved the Vice-President from the House chamber to safety. At 2:24, Trump tweeted: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done,” that is, to reject the ballots submitted by the Electoral College which, if counted, would give Joe Biden victory. Calling Pence a coward could only have encouraged the Capitol’s invaders. The situation continued to deteriorate. At 2:26, Senator Tommy Tuberville told Trump on the phone that he (Tuberville) could no longer stay in the chamber; it was being evacuated. Then, at 2:38, Trump issued a cover-up tweet to the rioters: “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!” Nonetheless, at that point (2:41), Tarrio used a Parler social-media account to give his orders. According to Rachael Levy of the Wall Street Journal his words were: “Proud Of My Boys and my country…. Don’t ***ing leave.” “His boys” were the Proud Boy rioters, and others intent on disrupting the counting of electoral ballots.
It took over a year for prosecutors to reveal how clearly Enrique Tarrio supervised the attack of the far-right Proud Boys. These were the same militia-style activists whom Trump had ordered during the presidential debate with Biden on Sept 29, 2020, to “stand back and stand by.” Then, back in action on January 6, Tarrio ignored Trump’s plea to stay peaceful, and instead commanded the rioters to hold the building. There was nothing spontaneous about his message. Indeed, Feuer’s article reports on a document federal prosecutors have found entitled “1776 Returns.” It outlines plans for January 6 and calls for the occupation of six House and Senate buildings and the Supreme Court. These plans did not remain fantasy. Unexploded bombs were found concealed in satchels outside both the House and Senate Office Buildings. Whoever wrote this just-revealed document, it outlines a plan for a government takeover that made its way to a person calling shots more explicitly than the then president on that fateful day. Participants in the plan were to occupy the designated buildings and conduct sit-ins there after a “signal from lead.” They were then to “storm” the buildings. Enrique Tarrio was not, himself, in Washington on January 6. He had been arrested days earlier for activities during the December, 2020, protests that vandalized Black Lives Matter symbols after a pro-Trump rally. After being charged with the possession of two high-capacity rifle magazines, he was subsequently ordered out of the capital as part of an arrangement for his release. That hardly removed him from a position of influence.
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