It's been a nearly four-month trial for the criminal case against five Proud Boys who prosecutors say instigated the shocking Jan. 6 attack on our Capitol, and it will now be handed over to a jury. Former Proud Boys national chair Enrique Tarrio took his hero Donald Trump and threw him under the bus in court. On Tuesday, Tarrio told jurors he was a scapegoat for former President Donald Trump.

Via Politico:

"It was Donald Trump's words. It was his motivation. It was his anger that caused what occurred on January 6th in your amazing and beautiful city," said Nayib Hassan, Tarrio's lawyer, during closing arguments in a seditious conspiracy trial stemming from the Jan. 6 attack.

Hassan leaned heavily into the role Trump played in ginning up the crowd at his rally the morning of Jan. 6, just minutes before rioters began breaching police barricades at the Capitol. Trump urged his supporters to "fight like hell" just 36 minutes before the first wave of the mob charged at police, Hassan noted.

"It was not Enrique Tarrio. They want to use Enrique Tarrio as a scapegoat for Donald Trump and those in power," Hassan said.
Trump has loomed in the background of Tarrio's trial, the most significant to emerge from the Jan. 6 assault on Congress. He's charged alongside four other Proud Boys leaders — Ethan Nordean, Joe Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola — with orchestrating a violent effort to derail the transfer of power from Trump to Joe Biden.

Prosecutors say the leaders, loyal to Trump and fearful of the Proud Boys' survival in a post-
Trump America, devised plans to keep Trump in office. And throughout the four-month trial, the Justice Department repeatedly emphasized how Tarrio and the Proud Boys keyed off and drew energy from Trump's own bid to subvert the 2020 election. The group's plan went into overdrive, prosecutors said, after Trump's Dec. 19, 2020 tweet calling on supporters to descend on Washington on Jan. 6, 2021 to challenge the election results.

Hassan noted that Trump contributed to a surge in Proud Boys recruitment after urging members to “stand back and stand by” during a debate against Biden in 2020. We all remember that startling moment. It appears that the Proud Boys do, too.

Tarrio was indicted last year on one count of each conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and obstruction of an official proceeding, as well as two counts each of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers and destruction of government property.