Five Proud Boys leaders sue Justice Department over Jan. 6 prosecutions

Five leaders of the Proud Boys, four of whom were found guilty of engaging in a seditious conspiracy to keep President Donald Trump in power on Jan. 6, 2021, want the government to pay them $100 million in restitution over claims their constitutional rights were violated, according to a federal lawsuit filed Friday in Florida.

The lawsuit follows Trump’s decision to pardon virtually all Jan. 6. defendants in one of his opening acts as president, an extraordinary attempt to recast the official public narrative about an attack that halted a cornerstone of America democracy: the peaceful transfer of power.

Now, the suit could force the Trump administration to defend the prosecutions, which many among the president’s base viewed as overzealous and politically motivated. Or, pay damages at taxpayers’ expense to the Proud Boys, a far-right group with a history of violence, a decision historians warn could amount to an endorsement of using violence for political gain.

“A settlement would suggest that the violence of January 6 was entirely justified,” said Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University. “It would say to the country that these Proud Boys who were convicted in a court of law, in a fair trial, were wrongfully prosecuted and victims. It just turns the entire day on its head.”

The lawsuit - filed by Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola - claims federal authorities violated the Constitution in an effort “to punish and oppress political allies of President Donald Trump, by any and all means necessary, legal, or illegal.”

Tarrio, who was barred from the city on Jan. 6 due to a previous arrest, was convicted of plotting the attack on the U.S. Capitol and was sentenced to 22 years, the stiffest penalty of all Jan. 6 cases.

In Tarrio’s absence that day, prosecutors said Nordean, Biggs and Rehl stepped into leadership roles. Video showed Pezzola using a police riot shield to break through glass on the Capitol’s west terrace, enabling what prosecutors have said was the first breach of the building.

Nordean, Biggs and Rehl all received long sentences - 18 years, 17 years and 15 years, respectively - for seditious conspiracy. Pezzola was sentenced to 10 years for conspiracy to obstruct Congress.

Trump and his administration have already signaled a willingness to ignore past investigative conclusions in a show of support to rioters. In addition to Trump’s sweeping pardons, the U.S. Justice Department reached an agreement last month to settle the wrongful death case brought by the family of Ashli Babbitt, who was fatally shot by police in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot as she tried to storm the House Speaker’s Lobby.

The Justice Department previously found insufficient evidence to prove Babbitt’s civil rights had been violated, and a Capitol Police investigation cleared the officer involved.

The attack, which interrupted Congress’s certification of Joe Biden’s election on Jan. 6, 2021, has become one of the most divisive chapters of recent U.S. history, with many Trump supporters - and the president himself - falsely recasting the violent mob as patriots justifiably protesting a stolen election. Five people died in or immediately after the violence, during which more than 140 officers were assaulted.

Legal analysts said Trump has helped lay the ground work for such claims, not only by granting pardons to nearly all of roughly 1,600 Capitol riot defendants, but also by calling the prosecutions in his pardon proclamation “a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years.”