The Proud Boys are a group of men who formed a drinking club and ended up having a patriotism problem, according to original founder Gavin McInnes who never could have imagined what a target he created for the Marxist left to obsess over.
Currently, the Proud Boys are the target of the US Government in a high-profile trial for sedition- and they are being treated as a scapegoat for the disaster that unfolded on Jan. 6th, 2021, at the US Capitol.
And part of their defense is that they were set up by the FBI, which is becoming an all too familiar thing in these cases of domestic violence and extremism.
Tarrio, Pezzola, Zachary Rehl, Ethan Nordean, and Joseph Biggs are charged in the case. The Proud Boys defendants, on trial in the U.S. District Court in Washington, were accused of seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct official proceedings, obstruction of official proceedings, and conspiracy to prevent certain federal officers from performing their duties on January 6. Tarrio, Rehl, Nordean, and Biggs face nine criminal counts, while Pezzola is charged with 10.
News earlier in the week was that the defense attorneys testified in court that the FBI planted evidence on the leader of the Proud Boys while having an affair with him.
That was an anticipated defense. USA Today reported in midsummer about the document that Proud Boy’s attorney introduce called 1776 Returns.
“Patrick Cotter, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago who has practiced criminal law for 40 years, said the “1776 Returns” document is a bombshell for prosecutors, assuming it can be verified,” the outlet reported.
“The authors are clearly planning multiple, multiple felonies; they’re saying how they’re going to do it, and it’s all in service, apparently, to a broader crime, which is the sedition.” Cotter said. “The purpose of the of the whole plan is, as they put it, ‘No Trump, No America.’ Either Trump will be given the presidency, election be damned, or they will shut down America and they will take violent action.”
“The plan, essentially, is to have individuals inside these buildings, either cause a distraction, or—pull fire alarms in other parts of the city to distract law enforcement so that a crowd can then rush the buildings and occupy the interior so they can demand a new election,” FBI Agent Peter Dubrowski told the jury.
In other words, an “insurrection!”
A bombshell motion filed over the weekend debunks the Justice Department’s suggestion that the document was a product, or at least a roadmap, used to guide the group’s conduct on January 6. The filing suggests that the handling of “1776 Returns,” like so much of January 6, was yet another sting operation.
“It appears that the government itself is the author of the most incriminating and damning document in this case, which was mysteriously sent at government request to Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio immediately prior to January 6 in order to frame or implicate Tarrio in a government created scheme to storm buildings around the Capitol,” wrote Roger Roots, attorney for Dominic Pezzola, in the motion seeking a mistrial. “As such, [the document] and the government’s efforts to frame or smear defendants with it, constitutes outrageous government conduct.”
Turns out, the person responsible for preparing the document is a man named Samuel Armes, a young cryptocurrency expert living in Florida. But Armes’ résumé raises many red flags, particularly in a case involving the use of multiple government informants.
The Epoch Times reported on Wednesday that Federal prosecutors have denied planting manufactured evidence on Enrique Tarrio in order to frame him and other Proud Boys defendants, saying that assertions made by defense counsel are “simply incorrect.”
The government had to admit that if that had happened, it would be very wrong:
“The government robustly agrees with defendant Pezzola that it would have been egregiously improper for a member of the U.S. intelligence community to have conducted a domestic intelligence operation targeting Enrique Tarrio, a U.S. person, and providing him with a plan to ‘storm’ (or ‘occupy’ or ‘sit in’) House and Senate office buildings on January 6,” the U.S. Department of Justice wrote in a court filing late on Feb. 13.
Defense attorney Roger Roots wrote that a “damning” document titled “1776 Returns” was authored by a member of the U.S. intelligence community and passed on to former Proud Boys chairman Tarrio by Erika Flores, an “erstwhile romantic interest” of Tarrio’s.
“Defendant [Dominic] Pezzola’s allegation that ‘new information reveals that the “1776 Returns” document were (sic) authored by the government itself’ is simply incorrect,” prosecutors wrote.
The document—which prosecutors contend is a blueprint for the Proud Boys to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021—was written in part or in whole by Samuel Armes, a man who, while in college, was “groomed” to work at the FBI and CIA, Roots asserted in his motion.
Armes told the now-defunct House Jan. 6 Select Committee that he has done work for the U.S. State Department and the Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa, Florida.
Roots asked U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly to hold an evidentiary hearing on the “1776 Returns” document and, if his allegations were substantiated, declare a mistrial with prejudice.
