Jubilation.
“Jubilation” was the word that FBI Special Agent Peter Dubrowski used in court Wednesday to describe how Proud Boys reacted in their private communications when former President Donald Trump told them to “stand back and stand by” during a presidential debate in 2020.
The upswell of joy, Dubrowski told prosecutors, came fast, and it was Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, the ringleader of the extremist group, who echoed Trump’s messaging to members in a Telegram chat that September.
“Guys...” Tarrio wrote. “Standby.”
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Tarrio and fellow Proud Boys now on trial for seditious conspiracy, including Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Dominic Pezzola, and Zachary Rehl, have so far escaped the jury’s closer inspection of their communications leading up to and on the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
This week, after a stretch of lengthy expository and technical testimony delivered by an FBI digital forensic examiner, the time had finally come for the messages to start surfacing in earnest.
Dubrowski, a former criminal defense attorney who has been with the FBI for three years and specializes in counterintelligence and criminal conspiracies, analyzed a massive trove of Proud Boys messages that were obtained via search warrant. There were threads and chat groups set up by the hundreds across a variety of messaging apps like Signal, Facetime, and Zoom.
All told, Dubrowski said, the FBI reviewed more than a half million individual messages, throwing aside the mundane or irrelevant from those communications key to the investigation of the alleged conspiracy to stop the certification of the 2020 election by force.
In the fall of 2020, two chat groups started to overflow with discussions of a “stolen” election. There was the “Official Presidential Chat,” a group designated just for Proud Boy chapter presidents, which Dubrowski said contained roughly 60 participants. Talk there varied; there were chapter business discussions as often as there were discussions about family life or politics.
“It ran the scope,” Dubrowski testified.
The other chat was the “Skull and Bones” chat, a much smaller group that was focused expressly on “Proud Boys business,” the agent said, and membership there was only for “elders” of the self-proclaimed “Western chauvinist” group.
In September 2020, Proud Boys in the Official Presidents Chat, which included Tarrio, Nordean, Rehl, and other members like John Charles Stewart of Pennsylvania—who has pleaded guilty to charges already—reacted to the debate. Stewart, who went by the handle “Johnny Blackbeard” on Telegram, said the debate was a “bloodbath” and “cringe as fuck.”
Yet once Trump failed to condemn white supremacy when pressed by debate moderator Chris Wallace and then urged Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” after then-presidential candidate Joe Biden pressed him to condemn the group specifically, the defendants erupted in glee.
It was an “immediate” reaction, Dubrowski told the jury.
“Jubilation,” he said.
Proud Boy Johnny Stewart gushed that an “impact has been made.”
“If your enemy is calling for you to stand down by name, there is a reason,” Stewart wrote.
Official Presidents Chat_Sk... by Daily Kos
Before 10:30 PM that night, Tarrio told the group to “standby.” Within an hour, Zachary Rehl responded in the group chat.
He had been watching the news, he said.
“We’re clearly brought into the presidential conversation,” he wrote. “Let’s hope daddy Trump plays it right.”
When another member of the chat asked “what the fuck” Trump meant by “stand back, stand by,” Stewart said he took it to mean, stand by, don’t engage in anything immediately but be ready to go.
Tarrio replied in the chain: “Visiting the White House soon.”
Tarrio would visit the White House on Dec. 12, 2020. That morning he posted a picture of himself on the right-leaning messaging app Parler, saying he had received a “last minute invite to an undisclosed location.”
At the time, Trump’s deputy press secretary Judd Deere denied that Tarrio was invited and said Tarrio was attending a public Christmas tour. Dec. 12, 2020, also marked a pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, D.C., that was heavily attended by Proud Boys and members of other extremist groups.
That night, after Tarrio visited the White House during the day, he vandalized a Black Lives Matter sign by setting it aflame after he stole it from a historic Black church just blocks from the White House. Former Trump White House Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Ornato told the Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol that Tarrio’s entry to the White House was flagged to the Secret Service. That agency’s joint operations team was notified of Tarrio’s visit in advance, Ornato testified.
But Ornato, a former Secret Service agent, also rather bizarrely said he didn’t know who Tarrio was and couldn’t recall being “aware” of whether he knew who the Proud Boys were at the time.
“There was so many groups. I mean, I could’ve known at the time. I just don’t recall this specific group of knowing—you know, I knew Code Pink—I knew, there’s different—when I was actually working as a special agent in charge, there were different groups that I was always briefed on, and had in my head,” Ornato said in November 2022.
Emails obtained by the select committee, however, showed former President Trump’s security detail discussing Tarrio and inquiring over why they hadn’t been alerted about Tarrio’s visit. Ornato said he couldn’t recall those conversations, either.
At trial, defense attorneys Nick Smith and Carmen Hernandez lodged objections vigorously and rapidly before a video of Trump’s “stand back and stand by” remark was played for jurors. Tarrio’s attorneys, Sabino Jauregui and Nayib Hassan, were noticeably more reserved with objections during this stretch of direct examination.
Presiding U.S. District Judge Tim Kelly ruled last month that prosecutors could use the footage in the case because it went toward motive as well as the alleged conspiracy. He overruled objections to the footage on Wednesday.
In the Skull and Bones chat, participants were equally delighted with Trump after the presidential debate.
“We are bigger than Jesus,” one member wrote.
“Kings,” Tarrio replied.
Tarrio, who went by the handle “NobleLead,” received his accolades from fellow members, and one user in the elders-only group “nominated” Tarrio for 2021 chairman.
In another group chat that wasn’t exclusive to Proud Boy participants only, defendant Joseph Biggs exclaimed: “I’m so happy.” His co-defendant, Ethan Nordean, responded: “He said our name!!!”
Biggs said his phone wouldn’t stop ringing.
Jurors also saw portions of chats from October 2020, a full month before the presidential election.
Prosecutor Mulroe had Dubrowski read some of the messages from a chat dubbed “PB Uncensored” on Wednesday.
This channel was markedly rife with vitriol, Dubrowski explained. It was so bad that even elders had discussed the group and tried to figure out what to do about the unchained communications.
“There’s one solution to this problem,” Tarrio wrote to elders in the “Skull and Bones” group. “We can just say we don’t know who runs the channel and any other communications from any channel but ours is not our position.”
It was about “plausible deniability,” he wrote.
Nordean had a counterproposal of sorts.
“Why don’t we just fash the fuck out so we don’t have to deal with these problems anymore?” Nordean wrote. “Live free or die hard.”
Politics weren’t “working for nobody,” he added.
Dubrowski said “fash” was shorthand for “fascist.”
“The left is destroying our culture and mindfucking our children. It’s time to fucking rage not play tea time with [Republicans in Name Only]. That’s my two cents,” he said.
Mulroe then showed jurors a text from Nov. 4. It was the very early morning after Election Day 2020.
It was just after midnight. The first votes that came in were Republican-leaning. As more votes were tallied, Democrats would start to take the lead.
Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News political editor, told the select committee investigating the insurrection last year that in every election, the trend is that Republicans win Election Day and Democrats win the early vote. This is known as the “red mirage.”
Zachary Rehl told the group after midnight on Nov. 4, 2020: “Biden is about to concede. Stand back and stand by.”
Over in the Official Presidents Chat, Proud Boy John Stewart and Tarrio started to discuss next steps, Dubrowski testified.
“Question now is, what happens next?” Stewart wrote on Nov. 4. “They are going to steal this election.”
Within two days, in that same group, Stewart said if Proud Boys lived in swing states it was time to do their part and call state legislature to demand they select elector slates that were loyal only to Trump.
Tarrio told the group not just to “sit on Telegram.”
“In those swing states, get to those election offices,” Tarrio wrote. “No colors. But bring people.”
The “colors,” Debrowski testified, were the traditional black-and-yellow garb that Proud Boys would wear at rallies or various outings. Last month, jurors first began to see some of the physical evidence seized from the defendants’ homes, including black-and-yellow Proud Boys-branded tee shirts, patches, and challenge coins.
Other evidence showed how Proud Boys like Joseph Biggs discussed not wearing the group's “colors” on Jan. 6 so they could blend in with the crowd better. The defense claims this was so they could suss out “antifa.”
“DC ANTIFA. We will not be attending DC in colors. We will be blending in as one of you. You won’t see us. You’ll even think we are you. We are going to smell like you. Move like you and look like you. The only thing we will do that’s us is think like us! Jan. 6 is gonna be epic. Can’t wait to walk around with you all,” Biggs wrote on Parler in late December.
He ended the screed with a winking face emoji.
In the Skull and Bones chat, Tarrio reacted to Biden’s win.
“Dark times if it isn’t reversed and if its reversed, civil war,” he wrote.
As the sixteenth trial day came to an end, Special Agent Dubrowski also began to pore over “side chats” that he observed happening among Tarrio and fellow Proud Boy Jeremy Bertino.
Bertino, who went by the handle Noble Beard, has already pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy.
“Bro, what the fuck happened?” Bertino asked Tarrio on Nov. 7. “They called it. Now we have to mobilize. Should we roll out to state houses?”
“Yes, I’ll be available after Sunday,” Tarrio said.
The pro-Trump Million MAGA March was a week away at that point, Dubrowski testified.
A day after Bertino asked Tarrio what to do next, Bertino told him he was headed to a rally.
“Make sure… no colors,” Tarrio wrote. [Ellipses original]
“Why not? Those wheels are already in motion?” Bertino wrote.
“The campaign asked us not to wear colors to these events,” Tarrio replied.
“OK,” Bertino said.
At court on Wednesday, exhibits made available to jurors were not immediately clear as to whether “the campaign” was explicitly a reference to Trump’s presidential campaign or some other entity.
Exhibits did show, however, that two days after the Million MAGA March had ended in clashes and violence, back in the Official Presidents Chat, Tarrio asked Proud Boy John Stewart to call him after Stewart raised concerns about leadership issues.
There are no records of the contents of that phone call.
On Thursday, Agent Dubrowski is expected to resume his direct testimony at 9 AM ET.
For a blow-by-blow, check out the Twitter feed below or the Daily Kos live blog link available here.