The charge of seditious conspiracy is the same as in a recent trial of members of the Oath Keepers militia, but the Proud Boys defendants are accused of a central role in the fighting at the Capitol.
On the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, as scores of Proud Boys were getting ready to take their place in a pro-Trump mob outside the Capitol, a leader of the far-right group sent a message to his colleagues.
“I want to see thousands of normies burn that city to ash today,” he wrote.
Almost two years later, the notion that the Proud Boys wanted to provoke violence among the “normies” — or the normal people — in the crowd that day rests at the heart of the government’s case against five members of the group who are facing trial on charges of seditious conspiracy in connection with the Capitol attack.
Expect lengthy sentences as pretext for railroading Trump.
