Five members of the Proud Boys movement that were convicted of sedition and related crimes for their alleged involvement in the January 6 Capitol protests, have sued the Department of Justice for $100 million, claiming they were politically persecuted in a corrupt prosecution. Enrique Tarrio, Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean, and Zachary Rehl were convicted of seditious conspiracy and related felony charges with lengthy sentences. While Dominic Pezzola was cleared of seditious conspiracy as charged, he was found guilty of obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and assaulting law enforcement.
Tarrio was the chairman of Proud Boys and was accused of planning the January 6 Protests. However, he was in Baltimore, not in Washington, D.C. Nonetheless, seemingly Biden politically aligned prosecutors said he orchestrated and encouraged the protests from afar, and received the harshest sentence of 22 years in federal prison and three years of supervised release. Biggs, Nordean, and Rehl received 17-, 18-, and 15-year prison sentences, respectively, each with an additional 36 months of supervised release, while Pezzola received a 10-year sentence and a 36-month supervised release. These sentences were some of the harshest in the history of the country for obstructing official proceedings and civil disobedience.
According to court documents, they claim their prosecution was an egregious and systemic abuse of the U.S. Constitution to oppress President Trump’s allies. They also allege multiple abuses of the U.S. Constitution, including evidence tampering, intimidation of witnesses, violation of attorney-client privileges, and spying. The manner of arrest also prominently features in their lawsuit. They seek redress for “multiple violations of their constitutional rights” by the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including their Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment Rights, as well as the common law tort of malicious prosecution and false imprisonment.
They also claim that Trump pardons vindicated them, allowing them to seek redress for the alleged violation of their constitutional rights. Fourteen members of the patriotic groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers benefited from Trump pardons. The plaintiffs note that Trump J6 pardons would correct “a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years,” of course, under Biden’s weaponized Justice System. Tarrio requests that President Trump pardon any remaining Proud Boys and Oath Keepers patriots still languishing in federal prisons. Many J6 protesters languished under appalling conditions until Trump came along. “You’ve seen what the president has said about January 6ers, and I believe that he did the right thing when he pardoned us on day one,” Tarrio said in a press conference. “And, I think there’s a lot of work to be done.”
It remains unclear if Trump’s Department of Justice will file an amicus brief or aggressively challenge the J6 hostages in court. Witnesses likely to appear in this lawsuit are potentially woke current and former DOJ employees, who are likely relics of the former weaponized DOJ. While Trump has done immense work to rid his administration of career Deep Staters, more work remains to be done, as Tarrio accurately noted. Meanwhile, former President Biden himself undermined the credibility of his justice system by claiming that his son was found guilty in a politically motivated prosecution. Nonetheless, it was later reported that he had considered pardoning his son long before he was found guilty. However, senior aides were reportedly instructed to stick to the official script and assure unsuspecting Americans that Biden would not interfere in the justice process.
