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Four members of the extremist street gang the Proud Boys were found guilty of seditious conspiracy Thursday for their actions leading up to and during the Jan. 6 insurrection. Meanwhile, a USA TODAY investigation revealed a neo-Nazi troll was running a hateful harassment campaign on the messaging app Telegram and creating racist and homophobic videos, all while he was officially in federal custody.
It’s the week in extremism.
Inside the Proud BoysThey joined the Wisconsin Proud Boys looking for brotherhood. They found racism, bullying and antisemitism.
Chinese American support for Proud BoysProud Boys saw wave of contributions from Chinese diaspora before Capitol attack
Proud Boys guilty: Can the group survive?
Proud Boys guilty4 Proud Boys, including leader Enrique Tarrio, guilty of seditious conspiracy for Jan. 6 Capitol attack
On Thursday morning, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and three other members of the Proud Boys extremist gang were found guilty of seditious conspiracy and other crimes in perhaps the most high-profile case to come out of the Jan. 6 insurrection. A fifth Proud Boy, Dominic Pezzola, who was one of the first protestors to enter the Capitol, was found guilty of assaulting officers, but escaped the seditious conspiracy charge for now, as jurors couldn’t decide whether he was guilty or not.
- The verdict is a huge win for the Justice Department, which has brought 1,000 prosecutions for the insurrection. Last year, high-ranking members of the Oath Keepers were also found guilty of seditious conspiracy, but the Proud Boys case has been especially closely watched.
- I took a look at what the verdicts mean for a group that has been splintered ever since Jan. 6, but shows no sign of disappearing. Experts said Proud Boys chapters continue to show up at protests, particularly anti-LBGTQ events, but that the prosecutions have had a chilling effect on large-scale protests.
- Yet to face any legal woes is Gavin McInnes, who founded the Proud Boys in 2016. McInnes, who is a Canadian citizen, lives in New York. Although he claims to have left the group in 2018, McInnes has been spotted in the company of Proud Boys and was still defending them on Thursday.
- “I begged them not to go,” McInnes wrote to me in a text message, referring to Jan. 6. “These guys have kids. This might as well be a death penalty,” he wrote in response to the verdicts. Asked what he thinks will happen to the Proud Boys now, McInnes wrote: “It will go on forever.”
More:Two years since the Jan. 6 insurrection, extremist groups are fragmented, but live on
Telegram used to wage campaign of racist, homophobic harassment
Our new investigation this week outlines how a group of people used the secure messaging app Telegram to organize a campaign of harassment and doxing of Black people, Jewish people, and members of the LGBTQ community over several months.
Project Mayhem on TelegramThey were flooded by online harassment and hatred. They didn’t know a targeted campaign caused it
- “Project Mayhem,” as it was called on Telegram, served as a channel for people to post “raids” on targets they disliked. Usually, these targets were Black, Jewish, members of the LGBTQ community or affiliated with anti-fascists.
- The channel targeted dozens of people including a business in Sacramento, a Jewish student in New Jersey and a Black comedian in Kentucky. In “raids” usually lasting anywhere from a few hours to a few days, members of Project Mayhem sent hateful messages and images and harassed people with threatening phone calls and text messages.
- USA TODAY asked Telegram for comment on the channel. The company never responded. But Project Mayhem quickly disappeared after we asked about it.
- “What’s so different about this is that it’s literally orchestrated,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “Harassment usually just arises almost out of the ether because people don’t like something somebody’s saying, and so they get mobbed online. But to direct attacks, that’s actually real nasty.”
Campaign coordinated by a man in federal custody
Federal inmate ran hate campaignHow one man pushed harassment ‘raids,’ sold racist paraphernalia online, while in federal custody
Not only was Project Mayhem a directed harassment campaign, but it was also being coordinated by a man called Paul Miller, who was in federal custody at the time. In a second story in our investigation, we lay out how Miller, who goes by “Gypsy Crusader” online, could have been posting racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic content online when he was ostensibly under the supervision of the federal Bureau of Prisons.
- Miller has a criminal record dating at least back to 2007, when he was convicted of felony drug possession and aggravated assault. He was raided by the FBI in 2021 and charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was convicted on those charges later that year and sentenced to 41 months in prison.
- Miller was released from prison in January and entered the murky area of “Residential Reentry Management” — essentially a system of halfway houses and home confinement monitored by regional RRM offices. Almost immediately, he went back to making the racist and anti-semitic videos that had gained him thousands of fans online.
- In addition to Project Mayhem and his hate-filled livestreams, Miller was also running a business based on his neo-Nazi views. He sold patches, paraphernalia, posters and even “cameos” where he often filmed himself saying the N-word for a paying customer. A researcher found Miller had raised more than $5,000 in the last few months just in cryptocurrency.
- After USA TODAY inquired about Miller’s activities with the Bureau of Prisons, he was transferred back to a secure facility.
Stat of the week: 17 years
That’s how long ex-agent Jared Wise worked at the FBI. Wise was arrested this week in Oregon and charged with entering the US Capitol and seeking to disrupt official proceedings during the Jan. 6 riot.
He’s one of at least 20 current or former members of law enforcement to be charged in relation to Jan. 6.
Investigation:After Jan. 6 riot, hundreds of identifiable people remain free. FBI arrests could take years
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