After the objection about the “OK” hand gesture considered a “white power” symbol, former Proud Boy Matthew Greene said it was “relatively common” and frequently used by Proud Boys to associate with other members.
As December gave way to January, the conversations about the 2020 election among Proud Boys still swirled with anger and resentment over the results. That tenor had only ramped up from November and Greene said Proud Boys were still questioning the election results and questioned what would happen in the future.
When the U.S. Supreme Court smacked down a lawsuit from Trump claiming fraud in the 2020 election, Proud Boys “grew more heated,” Greene said.
“We were talking about being ready and willing for anything that is going to happen,” Greene said.
At that time, there wasn’t a “concrete understanding of what that could mean,” but there were a lot of conversations, he said and Proud Boys saw themselves as the “tip of the spear, ready to act.”
“There were lots of conversations about the devolving of the country into a civil war,” Greene testified Tuesday.
The ‘Stop the Steal’ rally in D.C. in December 2020 was “more organized,” Greene told jurors.
Greene was part of a group of Proud Boys that was tapped to be “security” for public speakers from a group known as “Long Island Loud.”
They would march in a circle around speakers during the day and then when nightfall came, they hit the streets again. That night, Greene said he remembered Dominic Pezzola trying to get close to Tarrio and staying up front with the group.
Both Pezzola and Greene were low level members of the group and Greene said he assumed Pezzola’s proximity to Tarrio and other high ranking members was his attempt to ascend those ranks.
Greene didn’t want his picture taken that night and made efforts to obscure his face or avoid cameras. Pezzola did not, he said.
“I knew if I was identified, I would lose everything I had built,” Greene said.
The place-setting by the prosecution continued for another hour, with Greene’s testimony largely centered on the events in December.
Establishing what Greene called an “antagonistic” attitude by the Proud Boys towards counterprotesters or supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement or supporters of the antifa ideology is key, however.
Greene said that in December, members tried to “goad” fights with antifa and he never witnessed leadership discourage the practice.
During one notable bit of testimony, Greene said he recalled Pezzola “cracking someone over the head” with a motorcycle helmet. Proud Boys “patted him on the back for what he had done.”
When Kenerson asked why, Greene replied: “He stood up to respond to violence and everyone, and especially in the state of mind I was in, everyone was happy about it.”
As for Pezzola, Greene said the Rochester Proud Boy “didn’t back down from the acclaim” of the alleged assault.
After the rally on the ride home to New York from Washington, Greene was made into a first-degree Proud Boy.
Both he and Pezzola kept talking about their trepidations of what was around the corner when a new administration took power.
“I’m 40-something years old, I should be thinking about retirement not fighting a civil war,” Greene recalled Pezzola saying.
“We were openly expecting a civil war at that point,” Greene said Tuesday.