By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN (Associated Press)
WASHINGTON (AP) — A protection lawyer argued Tuesday on the shut of a landmark trial over the Jan. 6 riot that the Justice Department is making Proud Boys chief Enrique Tarrio a scapegoat for Donald Trump after the previous president’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.
Tarrio and 4 lieutenants are charged with seditious conspiracy for what prosecutors say was a plot to assault the Capitol to cease the switch of presidential energy from Trump to President Joe Biden after the 2020 election.
In his closing argument, protection lawyer Nayib Hassan famous Tarrio wasn’t in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, having been banned from the capital after being arrested on allegations that he defaced a Black Lives Matter banner. Trump, Hassan argued, was the one guilty for extorting a crowd outdoors the White House to “ fight like hell.”
“It was Donald Trump’s words. It was his motivation. It was his anger that caused what occurred on January 6th in your beautiful and amazing city,” Hassan advised jurors in Washington federal courtroom. “It was not Enrique Tarrio. They want to use Enrique Tarrio as a scapegoat for Donald J. Trump and those in power.”
Seditious conspiracy, a not often used cost that may be tough to show, carries a potential jail time period of as much as 20 years.
Tarrio is without doubt one of the prime targets of the Justice Department’s investigation of the riot, which briefly halted the certification of Biden’s election win.
From the outset of the trial, Tarrio’s legal professionals have accused prosecutors of utilizing him as a scapegoat as a result of charging Trump or his highly effective allies can be too tough. But his lawyer’s closing arguments have been probably the most full-throated expression of that protection technique for the reason that trial began greater than three months in the past.
Trump has denied inciting any violence on Jan. 6 and has argued that he was permitted by the First Amendment to problem his loss to Biden. The former president is dealing with a number of civil lawsuits over the riot and a particular counsel named by Attorney General Merrick Garland can be overseeing investigations into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the outcomes of the election.
A prosecutor advised jurors on Monday throughout the first day of closing arguments that the Proud Boys have been prepared for “all-out war” and considered themselves as foot troopers combating for Trump because the Republican unfold lies that Democrats stole the election from him.
“These defendants saw themselves as Donald Trump’s army, fighting to keep their preferred leader in power no matter what the law or the courts had to say about it,” mentioned the prosecutor, Conor Mulroe.
Jurors may start deliberating as quickly as Tuesday after listening to closing arguments and a rebuttal from prosecutors.
Tarrio, a Miami resident, is on trial with Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola. Nordean, of Auburn, Washington, was a Proud Boys chapter president. Biggs, of Ormond Beach, Florida, was a self-described Proud Boys organizer. Rehl was president of a Proud Boys chapter in Philadelphia. Pezzola was a Proud Boys member from Rochester, New York.
Attorneys for Nordean and Rehl gave their closing arguments on Monday.
Tarrio is accused of orchestrating an assault from afar despite the fact that he wasn’t in Washington that day. Police arrested him two days earlier than the riot on prices that he burned a church’s Black Lives Matter banner throughout an earlier march within the metropolis. A choose ordered Tarrio to go away Washington after his arrest.
Defense attorneys have argued that there isn’t any proof of a conspiracy or a plan for the Proud Boys to assault the Capitol. Tarrio “had no plan, no objective and no understanding of an objective,” his lawyer mentioned.
Pezzola testified that he by no means spoke to any of his co-defendants earlier than they sat in the identical courtroom after their arrests. Defense lawyer Steven Metcalf mentioned Pezzola by no means knew of any plan for Jan. 6 or joined in any conspiracy with the Proud Boys leaders.
“It’s not possible. It’s fairy dust. It doesn’t exist,” Metcalf mentioned.
Mulroe, the prosecutor, advised jurors {that a} conspiracy could be an unstated and implicit “mutual understanding, reached with a wink and a nod.”
The basis of the federal government’s case, which began with jury choice in December, is a trove of messages that Proud Boys leaders and members privately exchanged in encrypted chats — and publicly posted on social media — earlier than, throughout and after the lethal Jan. 6 assault.
Another prosecutor, Nadia Moore, mentioned the Proud Boys did extra than simply speak about their purpose of holding Trump in workplace. They marched to the Capitol and helped cease the certification of the Electoral College vote, she advised jurors.
“These men aren’t here because of what they said. They’re here because of what they did,” Moore mentioned Tuesday.
Norm Pattis, one in every of Biggs’ attorneys, described the Capitol riot as an “aberration” and advised jurors that their verdict “means so much more than January 6th itself” as a result of it can ”converse to the long run.”
“Show the world with this verdict that the rule of law is alive and well in the United States,” Pattis mentioned.
The Justice Department has already secured seditious conspiracy convictions towards the founder and members of one other far-right extremist group, the Oath Keepers. But that is the primary main trial involving leaders of the far-right Proud Boys, a neo-fascist group of self-described “Western chauvinists” that continues to be a drive in mainstream Republican circles.
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This model corrects that jury choice within the trial started in December, not January.
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Follow the AP’s protection of the U.S. Capitol revolt at https://apnews.com/hub/capitol-siege.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”