‘All-out revolution’: Proud Boy describes group’s desperation as Jan. 6 approached

A top lieutenant of the Proud Boys’ chairman, Enrique Tarrio, described on Wednesday a growing desperation among the group’s leaders as Jan. 6, 2021, approached and then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results sputtered.

That’s when the group’s thoughts turned to “all-out revolution,” according to Jeremy Bertino, the Justice Department’s star witness in the seditious conspiracy trial of Tarrio and four other Proud Boys leaders, who are charged with orchestrating a violent attempt to derail the transfer of power from Trump to Joe Biden.

Bertino, who pleaded guilty to his own seditious conspiracy charge last year, gave jurors an insider’s view of the Proud Boys’ leadership as Jan. 6 approached and the group became increasingly convinced that the Biden presidency posed an existential threat. Those views, prodded along at times by Trump’s own efforts to subvert his defeat, intensified after Tarrio was arrested on Jan. 4, 2021, upon arriving in Washington.

Now, the group’s leaders — Tarrio and Joe Biggs of Florida, Ethan Nordean of Seattle, Zachary Rehl of Philadelphia and Dominic Pezzola of New York — are facing the gravest charges to emerge from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

“Everyone felt very desperate,” Bertino said of the group’s increasingly militant rhetoric as Jan. 6 neared, particularly after the Supreme Court declined to take up Trump’s actions. As for Tarrio, Bertino added, “His tones were calculated, cold but very determined that he felt the exact same way that I did.”

Bertino didn’t travel to Washington on Jan. 6, in part because he was nursing a stab wound from a skirmish during a Dec. 12, 2020, visit to Washington to protest Trump’s defeat. But he remained in contact with the group on Jan. 6, including Tarrio, who had been released from jail and traveled to a Baltimore hotel. Prosecutors showed jurors Bertino’s excited messages, urging the Proud Boys to push farther into the Capitol and help disrupt the counting of electoral votes intended to certify Biden’s victory.

“I thought I was watching history,” Bertino recalled. “I thought it was historical. I thought it was a revolution starting.”

When one member of the group informed others that then-Vice President Mike Pence had resisted Trump’s entreaties to overturn the election on his own, Bertino assured them: “Don’t worry, boys. America’s taking care of it right now.”

Bertino’s jubilance turned into fury after Trump told rioters to go home and law enforcement cleared the Capitol.

“We failed,” he told other Proud Boys in various Telegram chats, after Congress had returned to continue certifying Biden’s victory. He lamented that the rioters caused mayhem simply to “take selfies in Pelosi’s office.”

That sentiment continued into Jan. 7.

“I’m done fellas,” Bertino said in a voice message to the group. “In case you couldn’t fucking tell. I’m done. I didn’t take a knife in the fucking — in the lungs to watch the power be given right the fuck back to these evil cocksuckers. We need fucking war. We need to take it back. And we need to fucking get these motherfuckers. Judge, jury, executioner, we need to fucking hang traitors.”

“You ready to go full fash?” asked Proud Boy leader John Stewart in response, referring to fascism. Later, Stewart blamed the “normies” — the Proud Boys’ term for nonmembers who align with them — for having “stopped 25% of the way in.”

“That building should still be occupied right now. They should have cops stuck inside that building … They decided to run around and take a bunch of fucking selfies. And, you know, steal some fucking memorabilia to prove that they were in there so that their conviction is assured.”

Throughout Bertino's testimony — his second day on the stand — Prosecutors homed in on messages sent among Bertino and other Proud Boys leaders discussing the prospect of violence on Jan. 6, and noted repeatedly that Tarrio and other defendants never pushed back or suggested violence wasn’t the goal.

The entire trial — perhaps the most crucial to emerge from the Jan. 6 attack — may hinge on whether jurors believe Bertino’s testimony. He was in frequent contact with Tarrio and other group leaders in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6 and provided context for the group’s lengthy chats.

Defense attorneys have yet to cross-examine him, but they’re likely to press him on the contours of his plea deal with the government, as well as his voluminous testimony to the Jan. 6 select committee, which omitted many of the key details he described to the jury on Wednesday.

For example, Bertino described in court — but not to the select committee — an extensive Telegram chat with Tarrio on Jan. 6, while both men were watching the riot unfold from afar. Bertino described a feeling of pride at seeing the Proud Boys help lead the way into the Capitol and a pang of jealousy for being absent.

“I wanted to be there to witness what I believed was the next American revolution,” Bertino told jurors.

Bertino also clarified an odd text to Tarrio that read “They need to get peloton.” It was an autocorrect for Pelosi, Bertino said.

“She was the target, as far as the one who had been pushing the information [about the election],” Bertino recalled thinking. “She was the talking head of the opposition. And they needed to remove her from power.”