After five Oath Keepers were convicted last month of crimes related to the Jan. 6 insurrection, the leaders of the Proud Boys should be sweating. Jury selection began this week in the trial of Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and four of his top lieutenants on various charges, including seditious conspiracy, quite similar to those that Oath Keepers head Stewart Rhodes and his followers faced. The evidence seems similar too, as CNN reports: It's largely based on "the defendants' own words in texts and social media posts, as well as recorded planning meetings and videos from the riot." Even their defense strategies are the same. Just as the Oath Keepers tried to spin their extensive conspiracy leading up to the Capitol assault as little more than fantasy roleplay, Tarrio and other Proud Boys are arguing they had no pre-existing plans to storm the Capitol, and that any messages suggesting otherwise were just kidding around.
Every jury is different, and it's wise not to make assumptions about how any criminal trial will go. But it's worth noting that the jury in the Oath Keepers trial spent very little time deliberating before coming back with guilty verdicts on seditious conspiracy for Rhodes and his right hand man, Kelly Meggs, as well as convictions on various other charges for all five defendants. The "just kidding" defense is harder to pull off when the event you seemed to be planning — in this case, the Capitol insurrection — happened in broad daylight and on live TV, with extensive documentary evidence that your followers did exactly what you told them to do.
