In many ways, Washington is still not over the hangover of the Capitol attack. Like a good hangover, it’s long and sticky and comes back when you least expect it. For example, last Sunday, two days after commemorating the second anniversary of the January 6, 2021 low-intensity attack. The images came from Brasilia, where thousands of supporters of a former president, Jair Bolsonaro, were as resilient to defeat as Donald Trump has revived the memories of those in the United States who lived through this black day for democracy.
In the city courts, however, they do not need anyone to refresh their memory. All proceedings in what Attorney General Merrick Garland describes as “the most important case the Justice Department has begun in its history” are concluding in his federal district court. According to court records, 940 people were prosecuted for their actions on the day mobs stormed into Congress after attending a Trump rally near the White House. Emboldened by the still president, the insurgents sought to stop a previously gray democratic process: confirming Joe Biden’s legitimate election victory.
Two high-profile lawsuits clashed at the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse on Wednesday. On the fourth floor, five members of the Proud Boys, the violent far-right group whose members are not only men but also united by their reverence for Trump, were treated. The organization’s profile grew in the turbulent year of 2020, in part due to the protests that erupted across the country following the police killing of African American George Floyd.
Richard Barnett, at Nancy Pelosis’ desk, on January 6, 2021.
Two floors up, the jury heard the first witness, a congressman, in the case against Richard Bigo Barnett, who became an icon on Jan. 6 when he photographed himself with his feet on the desk of what was then the President’s office in the House of Representatives, Democrat Nancy Pelosi. Before leaving, he left her a note that said, “Hey Nancy, Bigo was here, Bitch” (Bitch, although in his defense he claims he wrote the slang biatch). He is charged with a variety of offenses, including obstructing government procedures, stealing property and breaking into a restricted building with a dangerous weapon. More specifically, a 950,000-volt stun gun (on Friday on Amazon for about $100).
The Proud Boys face a much more serious crime: “seditious conspiracy,” a charge not used lightly in the United States but for which Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, was found guilty in November. He could face up to 60 years in prison, but his case is exceptional: The average sentence in the trials that have ended with prison sentences is 60 days.
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Rhodes met with his counterpart at the head of the Proud Boys, Cuban Enrique Tarrio, in a parking lot on January 5. Both are certainly the most prominent figures in the attack on the Capitol. And that Tarrio wasn’t there. He watched the attack on TV from a Baltimore hotel: Police had banned him from entering Washington that day after he was arrested in the city for burning the anti-racist Black Lives Matter banner at a church.
Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio during a Black Lives Matter event in Miami on May 25, 2021. Anadolu Agency (Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Tarrio listened with apparent detachment Wednesday morning, exchanging jokes and half-smiles with another of the defendants, Ethan Nordean, who was seated next to him, as the judge admitted in evidence video that Trump lectured the Proud Boys during an election debate. “Hold back and get ready,” he told them. As the adrenaline rush of the attack on the Capitol subsided, Nordean wrote on his social media, “Fuck you, Trump, you have left us sleeping, blooding on the battlefield.”
Also on the bench were Zachary Rehl, Joe Biggs, who tweeted “this is war” after learning of the legitimate concession of winning the election to Joe Biden, and Nic Pezzola, remembered for a million repeated images; They show him on January 6 at 2:12 p.m. smashing one of the windows of the Capitol with the sign taken from a police officer. Pezzola was the first face in the crowd to desecrate Congress.
Prosecutors are trying, as in previous cases, to show that the riot was not spontaneous, as the defense claims, but an operation specially planned and directed by Tarrio and his team, aimed “right at the heart” of American democracy . The case also seeks to prove the crypto-fascist gang’s connections to Trump. Those connections, which the defendants deny, take up an entire chapter of the 814-page report released just before Christmas by the bipartisan Congressional Committee that has been investigating January 6 and its political fallout for 18 months. In it, its members conclude that “the Proud Boys led the charge, entered the Capitol, and brought in hundreds of people.”
One of the attackers with a lectern for then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021. Win McNamee (Getty Images)
Alongside the organized insurgency, it is this anonymous mass that is responsible for most of the arrests that are still taking place (and will continue to take place, authorities warn) across the country. They are the same ones that accumulate in the defendants’ dock at the Washington trials. Among the nearly 1,000 accused – for charges ranging from minor misdemeanors like raiding the Capitol without damaging it, to crimes like assault or defiance of authority (the day ended with 140 police officers injured and four suicides in the following days) or the famous “conspiracy to incite hatred” – everything is there: ex-cops like Thomas Webster (sentenced to 10 years in prison in the highest sentence to date), a CEO, an air conditioning installer (Kyle Young, seven years old), and a nurse, four models (like John Strand, who faces up to 24 years in prison), a boy scout leader, actor (Jacob Chansley, the famous QAnon shaman, 41 months) or an Olympic champion.
There is even a complete family, the Munns: the parents and the three children took part in the events. The former received prison sentences of 14 days; The latter were released on parole. All five belong to what might be called the January 6th middle class. Many of them probably didn’t expect to commit a crime when they went to the Trump rally. And many have blamed the mess they now find themselves in before the judge on the former president’s lies about voter fraud. Others, like Barnett, claim to be victims of “political persecution.”
The Munn family stands trial over the attack on the Capitol.
The squatter from Pelosi’s office, like other defendants, has set up a website to defend his innocence and is accepting donations to help pay for his attorney’s fees. He’s also soliciting money ($22,794 he’s raised so far) through a conservative-affiliated crowdfunding platform called GiveSendGo, which has raised more than $3.7 million for the Jan Sixers, according to The Washington Post. as those arrested and accused of attacking the Capitol call themselves.
There is an account in Telegram that provides links to each of these funding channels, and its admins always start and end the day the same way. At night, via a live chat, they invite you to pray together in memory of the prisoners. In the morning, they usually start the day by sharing a list of the trials scheduled in Washington over the next few hours. Last Friday, 24 running processes were added to the list. Two days earlier, in an interview with EL PAÍS, an employee of the Federal Court of Justice defined January 6, 2021 as “the longest day of American democracy”. A day that occupies most of the officers’ time at the E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse in Washington more than two years later.
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