Star U.S. witness says Proud Boys took ‘reins,’ led Jan. 6 riot by example

The sole member of the Proud Boys to plead guilty to seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6 attack testified Wednesday that members believed they had to “take the reins” and lead a new American revolution to keep President Donald Trump in office and claimed credit for the storming of the Capitol.

In dramatic testimony during the trial of longtime Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio, star government witness Jeremy Bertino, 43, of Belmont, N.C., implicated his former friend, saying the extremist group acted as the “tip of the spear” that day and led a mob by example by being among the first to confront police, topple barricades and break into the building.

“We influenced people, the normies, enough to stand up for themselves to take back their country and take back their freedom,” Bertino testified.

Bertino explained texts he sent Tarrio at 2:39 p.m., as rioters raced into the building from the east and the west, pouring into the evacuated Senate chamber and shouting for lawmakers’ heads.

“Brother you know we made this happen,” and “1776,” Bertino wrote, exulting with a profanity.

“I know,” Tarrio replied, referring to a palace raid during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and part of a plan shared with Tarrio calling for occupying Capitol buildings, “The Winter Palace.”

Defense attorneys for Tarrio and four top lieutenants began questioning Bertino on Wednesday afternoon. Prosecutors are relying on Bertino and other potential cooperators to detail the alleged Proud Boys conspiracy, and Bertino testified that he was convinced Tarrio felt exactly the way he and other Proud Boys leaders did.

Defense attorneys began cross-examination by emphasizing Bertino’s concession that no one in the far-right group, which has a history of violence, told him of a specific plan to storm the Capitol ahead of Jan. 6, and that he initially told FBI agents that as far as he knew, the Proud Boys were only going to attend Trump’s speech and demonstrate peacefully.

Bertino testified that he lied to the FBI and said he eventually pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy because Proud Boys leaders agreed “that we had to do anything that was necessary to save the country.”

Bertino said that the group’s plans changed after members arrived in D.C. and Tarrio was arrested. “I didn’t know the exact plan of how it was going to get done, [but] I know what the objective was,” Bertino testified.

Prosecutors allege that Tarrio and his men catalyzed violence after agreeing to do whatever it took to stop Congress from confirming the electoral vote on Jan. 6, and that some stated that violently storming the Capitol would accomplish it. Bertino admitted to such claims in a plea deal in which he hopes to trim a potential five-year prison term and possibly enter a federal witness protection program.

Bertino pleaded guilty in October to one count of seditious conspiracy and one count of illegal possession of firearms as a former felon after his home was searched in March. Tarrio is charged with having “directed, mobilized and led” a crowd of 200 supporters onto the Capitol grounds.

Bertino and Tarrio’s co-defendants were part of an inner circle of Proud Boys leaders picked by Tarrio to join a leadership group for Jan. 6 operations named the “Ministry of Self-Defense.”

Tarrio and Bertino are the only federally charged Jan. 6 defendants who were not in Washington that day. Instead, each separately monitored events remotely — Bertino because he was still recuperating from being stabbed at a December 2020 pro-Trump rally in Washington and Tarrio because he had been arrested on Jan. 4 and barred from the District for burning a church’s Black Lives Matter banner at that same earlier rally.

On the witness stand, Bertino said he saw Tarrio’s arrest for his conduct during a Dec. 12, 2020, rally in Washington and his own stabbing that night in a melee between the Proud Boys and counterprotesters outside Harry’s Bar in downtown Washington as triggering events for the Proud Boys’ rage.

“If Enrique was on the other side of the political spectrum, he wouldn’t have been arrested, therefore, bias. It tied together all of my feelings that basically the tide was changing, everything was shifting around us, and we were becoming the enemies of the people,” Bertino said.

That same day, Dec. 12, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Trump-backed bid to overturn the election.

After the court defeat, Bertino testified, the Proud Boys believed they had to “take the reins, and lead the people to freedom” — “freedom in opposition to a tyrannical government we felt was being installed, as opposed to voted in,” he said — and “all-out revolution.” The leadership group discussed the possibility that Proud Boys or Trump supporters could riot on Jan. 6. “Just let it happen,” Bertino counseled, “Maybe it’s the shot heard round the world and the normies will [attack] the cops.”

“[W]hat would they do [i]f 1 million patriots stormed and took the capital building. Shoot into the crowd?” one asked in a Telegram chat on Jan. 4.

“They would do nothing because they could do nothing,” another replied.

Bertino said no leaders objected. In another thread, Bertino wrote, “This is where rubber meets the road,” and that he hoped National Guard troops would remain loyal to their side.

On Jan. 6, Bertino urged the Proud Boys on. He testified that he was moved to tears following real-time video posts of Trump supporters rushing the Capitol.

“They need to get pelo[si],” Bertino wrote to Tarrio, referring to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Explaining on the stand, he said Pelosi “was the talking head of the opposition, and they needed to remove her from power.”

Bertino added, “We were always talking about being the tip of the spear, and that was just another example of us leading the way and leading by example. Follow us,” he testified.

That night after the storming of the Capitol, Bertino wrote: “We failed. The House is meeting again.”

Bertino testified that he went to Miami and met with Tarrio about a week after Jan. 6. Tarrio said that if he had been at the Capitol, he would have said “Go, go, go,” waving his hand forward, Bertino testified.