The New York Times
The police dismissed the proud boys, until they attacked the Capitol
A protester was burning an American flag outside the 2016 Republican convention in Cleveland when Joseph Biggs ran to attack. Skipping a police line, he tore off the man’s shirt and “started to beat,” he bragged that night in an online video. But the police accused the flag burner of assaulting Biggs. The city later paid $ 225,000 to settle charges that the police had falsified their reports out of sympathy for Biggs, who became a leader of the far-right Proud Boys. Two years later, in Portland, Oregon, a Proud Boy named Ethan Nordean was filmed making his way through a crowd of counterprotests, punching one and knocking him unconscious on the floor. Once again, the police accused only the other man in the skirmish, accusing him of swinging a baton against Nordean. Subscribe to the New York Times Now newsletter The Morning, Biggs, 37, and Nordean, 30, are the main targets of a federal investigation. They face some of the most serious accusations stemming from the attack on the U.S. Capitol in January: leading a crowd of about 100 Proud Boys in a coordinated plan to interrupt the certification of former President Donald Trump’s election defeat. But an examination of the two men’s stories shows that local and federal law enforcement agencies missed several opportunities to take action against them and their fellow Proud Boys long before they violated the Capitol. The group’s propensity for violence and extremism was no secret. But the FBI and other agencies often saw the Proud Boys as they chose to portray themselves, according to more than half a dozen current and former federal officials: as mere street fighters who lacked the organization or ambition of typical bureau targets like the neo. Nazis, international terrorists and Mexican drug cartels. While law enforcement agencies are unable to investigate political groups without reasonable suspicion of a crime, some former officials said they were surprised by the apparent impunity of the Proud Boys. Law enforcement officers sometimes appeared to be on the side of the Proud Boys, especially when they faced off against leftists who openly criticized law enforcement. Some local officials complained that, without guidance from federal agencies, their police departments were ill-equipped to understand the dangers of a national movement like the group. To avoid violence from other far-right groups, federal officials often use a tactic known as “knock and talk”. Agents call or confront group members to alert them to the demonstrations, sometimes reliving past criminal offenses as a lever. Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, told a Senate committee this month that agents did this in the run for a pro-Trump demonstration in Washington on Jan. 6 that preceded the attack on the Capitol. They contacted “a handful” of people who were already under criminal investigation to discourage attendance, he said. Enrique Tarrio, president of the Proud Boys, said federal agents had visited or called him on eight or more occasions before the rallies in recent years. But it was never to pressure you to stay away. Instead, he said, agents asked for march routes and other plans to separate the Proud Boys from the counterprotests. At other times, agents warned that they had detected potential threats from the left against him or his associates. But before the January 6 event, no one contacted the leaders of the Proud Boys, Tarrio said: “They haven’t contacted us.” ‘Reject, Reject, Reject’ In the summer of 2017, neo-Nazis, Klansmen and other white supremacists gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, to announce their resurgence at the “Unite the Right” rally. Its organizer, Jason Kessler, was a member of the Proud Boys. The group had been founded a year earlier by Gavin McInnes, now 50, the co-creator of the Vice media. (The company has long since severed all ties.) He was a Canadian who became a New Yorker with a record of statements attacking feminists and Muslims. The Proud Boys had volunteered as bodyguards for right-wing arsonists like Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos and often clashed with left-wing crowds. The Proud Boys’ “free speech” demonstrations in left bastions like Seattle, Portland or Berkeley, California, routinely ended in street fights. However, McInnes avoided the Unite the Right meeting, saying in an online video, “Reject, reject, reject”. According to him, the Proud Boys were not white supremacists, but only “Western chauvinists”. This stance helped the Proud Boys to escape scrutiny by federal authorities. The demonstration became violent; one participant drove his car against a crowd of counterprotests, killing one and injuring more than a dozen. Despite McInnes’ warnings, several prominent Proud Boys attended, including Tarrio. But members cite their role to argue that the Proud Boys are not racially exclusive: Tarrio’s origins are Afro-Cuban, making him one of the group’s rare non-white faces. The group, whose total membership is unknown, but believed to be in the thousands, has never articulated a specific ideology or dogma. Its rallies, however, feature hypernationalist chants on immigration, Islam and Trump. Their events often appear to be poorly disguised pretexts to lure opponents into confrontation. The Proud Boys made little effort to hide violent intentions. Career officials in federal law enforcement complained that the Trump administration sought to divert investigative resources to ill-defined threats from the left, such as the anti-violence movement known as antifa. However, the Proud Boys’ belligerence fits the definition of terrorism, other officials said: illegal violence and intimidation for political purposes. Members raised money to travel across state borders for dozens of demonstrations with the intention of street fighting, at least once explicitly targeting a Muslim community in upstate New York for harassment – activities that could have justified the authorities’ scrutiny. federal. An FBI spokesman declined to comment on the group. Nordean became one of the stars of the group, mainly through a viral video of his decisive coup in 2018 in Portland. An amateur bodybuilder who has already trained to be a Navy SEAL, Nordean met the Proud Boys for the first time in 2017, during a fight in Seattle with protesters for immigrant rights. In June 2018, Nordean went to Portland. After a so-called Freedom and Courage demonstration in a federal building, dozens of members marched around the block to face the counter-protests that awaited. Video footage showed Nordean throwing one on the floor before the other, David Busby, approached with a metal baton. At the time, a street fighting veteran, Nordean had placed shin guards on his forearms to prepare for combat. Dodging the stick with one arm, he gave a right hook to Busby’s jaw that knocked him unconscious, then threw the man to the floor. Busby was hospitalized with “a significant concussion,” noted a police report. On six Facebook pages the group uses to examine new recruits, the number of potential members has increased by more than 70% in the next 30 days, adding more than 820 potential Proud Boys, said Cassie Miller, a researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center. The number of active chapters across the country has exploded, rising from three in 2017 to around 44 in late 2018, according to a center count. Two other Proud Boys were arrested that day for violence during previous clashes. But Nordean does not. He “claimed that he exercised his right to defend himself and others,” noted the police report. The department declined to comment, as did Nordean’s lawyer. Biggs, the future leader of the Proud Boys who attacked the flag burner in Cleveland, was a broad-chested Army veteran. He started on the far right working as a correspondent for Infowars, which was how he met Nordean and the Proud Boys. Biggs’ history of violence predates his affiliation with the group. He was arrested in North Carolina on domestic violence charges in 2007; prosecutors dropped the case after his wife failed to appear as a witness. He was convicted of resisting prison in South Carolina in 2012 and sentenced to parole. And he was arrested in early 2016, accused of assaulting a security officer outside his Austin, Texas apartment. Biggs was at the Republican convention in Cleveland as an Infowars correspondent when he attacked the 64-year-old flag burner Gregory Johnson. A member of the Communist Party, he had been the plaintiff in the historic 1989 Supreme Court case, Johnson v. Texas, which established that the First Amendment protected flag burning. Although the video recordings indicated that Biggs started the fight by punching Johnson, a policeman said in a statement that Johnson “caused two members of the media to be burned by fire” – Biggs and a fellow Infowars. A Biggs lawyer declined to comment. Trump adviser Roger Stone, an Infowars regular, introduced Biggs to Tarrio, the president of the Proud Boys, and in 2019 he started helping him organize events. In August, Biggs helped organize a “End of Domestic Terrorism” rally in Portland. FBI agents pulled Biggs and Tarrio aside at Portland airport, but did not ask them to stay away from the rally, the Proud Boys president recalled. Instead, he explained, the agents alerted the two Proud Boys to threats from antifa activists against them. In late 2020, while Trump was trying to reverse his election defeat, Biggs and Tarrio marched ahead of hundreds of Proud Boys during a pro-Trump “Stop Theft” demonstration in Washington. Washington police arrested Tarrio on January 4, accusing him of illegal possession of two high-capacity magazines for an AR-15. But the authorities released him on the condition that he stay outside the District of Columbia during Trump’s demonstration two days later. No other Proud Boys were arrested in connection with the incident. The Proud Boys made no effort to hide their anticipation of political violence in the weeks leading up to January 6. “If there was ever a time for a second civil war, it is now,” wrote Biggs in a blog post shortly after the election. “Buy ammunition, clean your weapons, get storable food and water.” Nordean, meanwhile, used social media to solicit donations for “protective equipment” and “communication equipment,” court documents say. After Tarrio was expelled from Washington, according to prosecutors, the Proud Boys called on Nordean to assume “powers of war” and lead them on Capitol Hill. (It is unclear exactly what “powers of war” refer to.) The crowd of 100 people behind Biggs and Nordean was almost certainly the largest organized group that participated in the attack, and prosecutors said their members led the violence. A proud boy, Dominic Pezzola, was one of the first to break a window and break into the Capitol, court documents say. Federal agents have already executed search warrants against Proud Boys in four states. Prosecutors have so far accused 10 members of crimes, including destruction of government property and threats to a federal official. They are now trying to connect as many as possible on a comprehensive conspiracy charge. This article was originally published in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company