Zach Rehl, the former leader of the Philadelphia Proud Boys, was indicted Monday along with four other leaders of the organization on seditious conspiracy charges related to the assault on the US Capitol by furthering the violent assault.
Rehl, 36, had previously faced charges of conspiracy to obstruct certification of the 2020 presidential election.
The historically rare sedition charge brought against him and his co-defendants, including Enrique Tarrio, the former national president of the Proud Boys, two other regional leaders of the far-right group and a member of the group’s New York chapter, is the most serious accusation ever made. prosecutors charge. Charges have been filed against any of the more than 800 people accused of involvement in the attack.
» READ MORE: 62 Pennsylvanians have been charged in the Capitol riot. A year later, the judges begin to weigh their punishments.
To date, the Justice Department has filed sedition charges in only one other case: a sprawling indictment against Stewart Rhodes, the founder and leader of the extremist group The Oath Keepers, and 10 other members of his organization.
The conviction requires prosecutors to prove the men sought to overthrow the government or interfere with federal law enforcement and carries a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
Rehl, a Navy veteran and the son and grandson of Philadelphia police officers, has been held in custody without bond since his initial arrest in March 2021. He could not be reached for comment Monday.
His lawyer, Carmen Hernández, said that her client “maintains his innocence more now than before.”
“The last charge, seditious conspiracy, requires the use of force, and there is no allegation that he used force,” he said.
It’s unclear what new evidence prompted the additional charges, which came in the form of a 10-count superseding indictment unsealed Monday against Rehl; tarry; Proud Boys chapter presidents Ethan Nordean of Washington and Joseph Biggs of Florida; and Dominic Pezzola, a member of the New York Proud Boys.
Since the initial indictment last year, a Proud Boys lieutenant, Charles Donohue of North Carolina, who was originally charged along with Rehl and the other men, has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with the government’s investigation into the group.
Authorities also searched the homes of three other Proud Boys members, including Aaron Whallon Wolkind, vice president of the Philadelphia Proud Boys and Rehl’s top lieutenant, though they have yet to be publicly charged.
But those investigative steps and the new charges unsealed Monday demonstrate prosecutors’ efforts to capture a broader picture of cooperation and organization among the multiple extremist groups that played a role in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.
For example, prosecutors previously cited video evidence in Tarrio’s case of a meeting in an underground parking garage in the days before the attack. Participants included Tarrio, Rhodes and Joshua Macias, the leader of the right-wing pro-Trump group Vets for Trump who was arrested in Philadelphia in November 2020 after he drove from Virginia in a Hummer filled with guns and ammunition in an alleged attempt to to disrupt the ongoing electoral vote count at the city’s convention center.
In the new indictment, prosecutors described Rehl and the others as key forces in planning the assault on the Capitol building in the days leading up to Jan. 6 and stirring up the crowd during the attack.
Hoping to avoid mistakes from previous rallies that had turned into open street fights with far-left activists, the group decided to keep a lower profile. They would leave their traditional black and gold polo shirts at home, equip themselves with encrypted radios, and turn their attention to irritating “normals,” or unaffiliated supporters of President Donald Trump, behind whom they could hide.
They encouraged members from across the country to visit Washington that day, used websites to raise money for travel and equipmentequipped members with paramilitary gear and tactical vests, and developed plans to avoid detection,
A week before the attack, Tarrio, according to the indictment, received a nine-page document titled “1776 return” that lays out a plan to occupy some “crucial buildings” in Washington DC, including the House and Senate chambers with “many as many people as possible” to “show our politicians that we, the people, are in charge.”
That same day, prosecutors say, Rehl warned the others in a video call that Jan. 6 would be a “completely different operation” for the group and that this time, the Proud Boys would do more than “flex.” [arms] and shit.
A member of that group said on that Dec. 30 call that Rehl, whom Tarrio had appointed along with Biggs and Nordean to lead the Proud Boys in Washington, spoke with the same authority as Tarrio himself.
Tarrio “isn’t going to tell you anything different than what Zach is going to tell you,” the unnamed leader said. “It’s all an operating plan.”
Although Tarrio was not in Washington on the day of the attack, prosecutors have said he “remained in contact with other members of the Proud Boys” during the assault on the Capitol building.
Video footage from that day shows Nordean, Biggs and Rehl, wearing a “Make America Great Again” camo cap and a Temple Owls backpack, leading a crowd of about 100 Proud Boys from the Washington Monument to the Capitol security lines.
There, rioters, including Pezzola, jumped into the fray fighting with police and fighting their way into the building.
» READ MORE: Prosecutors put Philly Proud Boys president Zach Rehl at the center of Jan. 6 planning in new Capitol riot presentation
Photos later surfaced showing Rehl inside the building, smoking a cigarette amid a crowd of reveling rioters at Sen. Jeff Merkley’s (D., Ore.) office.
And as the chaos continued to unfold, prosecutors say, Tarrio posted a voice memo on a Proud Boys encrypted message group that proudly declared, “Make no mistake… We did this…”
Later that night, Tarrio sent another message, referencing the “Winter Palace,” a nod both to the imperial palace in St. Petersburg, Russia, which was stormed by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution of 1917, and to a section of the Proud Boys. ‘ planning document that had been called ‘Storming the Winter Palace’.
Attorneys for Rehl, Tarrio, Nordean, Biggs and Pezzola maintain that “the plan” their clients were discussing was simply to demonstrate in Washington in support of former President Donald Trump and that none of them arrived on January 6 with the intention of committing acts of violence or fomenting a riot.
Hernandez, Rehl’s attorney, said Monday that he plans to fight the new charges, as he did in the original case.
» READ MORE: Three more Philadelphia Proud Boys have been charged with rioting on Capitol Hill after taking photos inside a senator’s office
As of Monday afternoon, a crowdfunding account run by “Zach Rehl’s friends and family” on the Christian website GiveSendGo — popular with far-right organizations — had raised more than $43,300 in contributions for his family.
The page, which features a photo of Rehl sandwiched between two images of the US Constitution, describes the leader of the Philadelphia Proud Boys as “a father, a husband, a Marine Corps veteran, and a patriot who loves his country”.
Three additional members of the Philadelphia chapter of the Proud Boys: Isaiah Giddings, 29, of Philadelphia; Brian Healion, 31, of Upper Darby; and Freedom Vy, 36, of Philadelphia, have also been indicted on lesser charges related to the riots. They were not named in Monday’s new indictment against Rehl and his co-defendants.
Reference-www.inquirer.com