The Proud Boy Leaders’ Trial Takes Shape
I’m buried in other things, but I wanted to write up a few developments in the Proud Boys case.
Yesterday, along with a response to Ethan Nordean’s sustained complaints about Brady material and more general complaints from defense counsel about the difficulty of discovery in the Proud Boy Leaders’ case, the government released a discovery index for its case against Enrique Tarrio and his co-defendants. It provides a snapshot of the government’s case against the Proud Boys.
Much of the discovery in this case consists of things we’ve seen in other cases: Lots of open source, surveillance, and body worn camera videos, the contents of phones and other devices (the term “scoped” means that FBI has provided to the defendants and others only the material deemed to be responsive to the warrant used to obtain the devices), and social media postings. The index also identifies items obtained in searches of defendants’ residences. There are calls from jail included for Ethan Nordean, Zach Rehl, and Matthew Greene. There is surveillance video from various hotel properties, including AirBNB.
There are a variety of interviews noted, including custodial interviews conducted after an arrest, as well as interviews not so marked, suggesting potential cooperation from people like Jeffrey and Jeremy Grace; the father and son pair were prosecuted separately, with son Jeremy pleading to a misdemeanor on April 8 and father Jeffrey due to plead guilty on June 17. Jeff Finley, who pled guilty to a misdemeanor on April 6 even proffered, implying more formal cooperation not identified in his plea paperwork. An interview with Greene, dated October 28, 2021, may reflect the beginning of his cooperation (he was the first Proud Boy to enter into an overt cooperation agreement). As of right now, there’s just one interview from Louis Colon and none from Charles Donohoe, the other two Proud Boys who entered into cooperation agreements. Perhaps most interesting, there is a “non-custodial surreptitious interview intercepted on 3/8/22” of Enrique Tarrio; one possible explanation for that is that the FBI wired someone up before talking to Tarrio. There’s also a surreptitious interview with someone whose name is redacted.
There are a few redaction fails, one for Eddie Block and another for Trevor McDonald, neither of whom have been arrested.
DOJ released this file with all the case numbers (in the first column of the table) unredacted. This list of the abbreviations for FBI Field Offices provides some indication about whether redacted subjects are located in the Philadelphia area (as Aaron Whallon-Wolkind is), the Pacific Northwest, somewhere between Baltimore and the Carolinas, or Saint Louis area.
I guess it’s rather late in this post to offer this warning, but this document will suck you in.
The government released this snapshot of their case even amid several other developments.
First, Joshua Pruitt, who is a long-term Proud Boy but who doesn’t show up in this index, will plead guilty at 1PM.
In a hearing on discovery yesterday, Rehl attorney Carmen Hernandez asked whether the government would comply with their earlier assurances that they would obtain any superseding indictment (potentially adding co-defendants) by June 1, as they promised earlier. The government (I believe this was AUSA Jason McCullough) declined to answer. From that, I take there may be an imminent superseding indictment, perhaps even one that remains sealed until co-defendants are arrested.
We know who won’t be in any superseding indictment though: yesterday the government released a superseding indictment against Christopher Worrell and Dan Scott, joining the two cases and adding obstruction charges to the former. Both men figure prominently in this index.
I guess it’s rather late in this post to offer this warning, but this document will suck you in.
hahaha…just what I needed! Oy!
You won’t regret the time spent! I’ve had multiple communications with journalists and researchers covering Jan6 gaping at different parts of this document.
Wasn’t expecting to see (U) and (U//FOUO) document designations.
OK…I see that [p.4] PEZZOLA is listed at WF and BF.
WF is DC, but BF is not on the list. This is the only place I can see that “BF” is used [3x]…any ideas for an explanation?
Also, what does 1A / 1B/ 1D mean?
It should be Buffalo, I think. He’s from upstate NY.
Thank you, MARCY! That makes sense.
I’m not Wise In The Ways Of Criminal Investigations, but I’m looking at
“In a hearing on discovery yesterday, Rehl attorney Carmen Hernandez asked whether the government would comply with their earlier assurances that they would obtain any superseding indictment (potentially adding co-defendants) by June 1, as they promised earlier. The government (I believe this was AUSA Jason McCullough) declined to answer. From that, I take there may be an imminent superseding indictment, perhaps even one that remains sealed until co-defendants are arrested.”
Is the government offering assurances that don’t turn out to be assurances the kind of thing that happens often?
If the answer is something like “the government can change its mind, especially based on new evidence in a continuing investigation”, that’s a perfectly fine answer, but to be blunt, I’ve read enough emptywheel posts about the Sussmann investigation and trial that I’ve become profoundly distrustful … no chance discrediting Federal investigations was also a Durham goal, is there?
“no chance discrediting Federal investigations was also a Durham goal, is there?”
I think bmaz would scoff. Still, such thoughts bring on tesseract sickness or something like that.
USG has a June 17 deadline for discovery. There’d be no way they can add defendants after that. I think it possible they’re about to supersede. I think it’s possible they’re doing a second conspiracy indictment of others. I think it’s possible — likely even — that they had obtained a superseding the day before but are waiting on arrests to roll it out. If the latter is the case, then in fact DOJ would have complied but would have reason to dodge like that.
I don’t entirely trust this Proud Boy team, either for competence or reliability (particularly as compared the Oath Keepers’ team). They’ve got a woman, Jocelyn Ballantine, who not only was prone to bullshit like this before 2020, but who was a key player (wittingly or by force) in Billy Barr’s politicization of the Flynn Investigation. She has no place on this case and yet there she is, still on it, yet not noticed on the docket.
That smacks me of a counterintelligence move. Should the Proud Boys suddenly have information known only to the government, Ballantine is the obvious place to look for the leak.
What, in particular, do we know of her work on this case, if she is not noticed on the docket?
Thanks for the context in this filing. I got sucked in.
By my count, it refers to phone images and/or interviews with 18 familiar PB affiliated individuals, not indicted in this case, some who are known to be cooperating with prosecutors.
If you have a year and a half, apparently, you can connect a lot of dots, each a needle in a massive haystack of information.
What is missing from the filings to date is reference to what appears to have been a coordinated messaging for violence, likely sent from the White House around December 20, 2020. Given all the phone seized from operational leaders, it is possible prosecutors have this evidence, but don’t need to show it for currently prosecutions. It is clear that the militias were pursuing a coordinated plan for violence at the Capitol, but hundreds of random dudes also got the word, within the mobilization of a massive, legal first amendment event. A small number of messages found on a large number of violent rioter’s phones would reinforce this notion, and figuring out where they came from would be interesting. I expect the “MAGA Drag the Interstate” and stop the steal promotion items that mentioned the unpermitted March on the Capitol, were likely derivative of this possible communication from the top.
We may get to see this higher level messaging at the imminent house Select committee public hearings. Recall near the end of the early Committee hearing with the law enforcement officers, one mentioned he saw a message that scared the hell out of him at the start of the riot. Rep Cheney asked that he submit that message for the record and he agreed. Whether it was the possible from the top message, or one of the derivative ones, it is useful for telling the story.