Philly Proud Boy who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 with the group’s top leaders pleads guilty

A onetime member of the Philadelphia Proud Boys admitted in court Thursday that he tussled with officers struggling to keep rioters at bay during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Brian Healion, 33, of Drexel Hill, pleaded guilty to one felony count of interfering with police during a civil disorder and faces as long as five years in prison at a sentencing hearing scheduled for June.

He is the third member of the far-right extremist group’s Philadelphia chapter to be convicted of playing a role in the attack that caused more than $2.9 million in damage, left scores of officers injured, and threatened the peaceful transfer of presidential power.

» READ MORE: Philly man for shoving officer outside the Capitol on Jan. 6

During a court hearing Thursday, Healion told U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly that he traveled to Washington the day before the riot with four other members of the Philadelphia Proud Boys, including the chapter’s then-president, Zachary Rehl.

Rehl is serving a 15-year sentence on sedition charges after a federal jury found him and three other top Proud Boys leaders from across the country guilty on sedition charges tied to their roles in planning the Jan. 6 attack.

» READ MORE: Proud Boys trial: Zach Rehl, the right-wing group’s Philly leader, and three others convicted in Jan. 6 sedition case

Healion’s lawyer, Paul F. Enzinna, did not immediately return requests for comment Thursday.

But in court filings surrounding the guilty plea, Healion admitted that he’d participated in a series of encrypted group chats with Proud Boys from across the country before Jan. 6 to plan the group’s presence in Washington as thousands of supporters of then-President Donald Trump descended on the city, at his urging.

“Gonna be war soon,” one member of the chat posted three days before the attack, prompting another to respond: “Time to stack those bodies in front of Capitol Hill.”

Others in a group chat wondered: “Are the normies” — an apparent reference to Trump supporters who were not Proud Boys members — “and ‘other’ attendees going to push through police lines and storm the Capitol buildings?”

For his part, Healion joined a video conference call with Proud Boys members seeking advice on what sort of equipment he should bring with him to Washington. High-ranking members of the organization suggested body armor.

» READ MORE: Pennsylvania Proud Boys played a big role in Jan. 6 planning: Key takeaways from Capitol riot sedition trial

Before he, Rehl and two other Philadelphia Proud Boys members — Isaiah Giddings, 31, and Freedom Vy, 45 — set out from Philadelphia on Jan. 5, they traded emergency contact info and blood types — as if, prosecutors suggested, they were expecting some sort of violence that day.

The morning of Jan. 6, Healion said, he and the others met up with a group of nearly 100 Proud Boys and sympathizers from across the country near the Washington Monument. Rehl and other members of the organization led the masses toward the Capitol building, taunting officers along the way with cries of “treason” and warnings to police not to oppose them.

Rehl, Healion, Giddings, and Vy were among the first crowd of rioters to burst through security perimeter around the Capitol building, after Ryan Samsel, 39, of Bristol, helped topple police barricades — an act that prosecutors have described as the inciting incident of the riot.

They stormed up toward the Capitol’s Upper West Terrace, pausing to snap selfies of themselves making the “OK” hand gesture adopted by the Proud Boys and other white power groups.

Rehl sent one of them to a group chat of Philadelphia Proud Boys members with the caption: “Bada— pic in DC.”

Healion admitted that all around him he witnessed incidents of rioters assaulting police. And as officers struggled to reestablish a security perimeter on the West Terrace, he broke off from his fellow Proud Boys to join the fracas himself, grabbing at bike rack barricades and attempting to pull them away from police.

Eventually, Healion rejoined Rehl, Giddings and Vy to enter the Capitol building. Security footage showed them carousing with other rioters in the office of U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.) while Rehl smoked a cigarette nearby.

The group left the building 20 minutes after they entered, prosecutors said. They headed back to Philadelphia the next day, Rehl told jurors at his trial — but not before stopping off to buy cases of beer.

With Rehl now behind bars and Healion facing a likely prison term of his own, the membership of the Philadelphia Proud Boys chapter has been significantly diminished.

Both Giddings and Vy were also charged with misdemeanors for their presence in the Capitol that day. Giddings pleaded guilty in December to disorderly conduct in the Capitol building and awaits sentencing.

Prosecutors in Vy’s case said last month that they continue to discuss a possible plea deal.

But even as Giddings, Vy, Rehl and Healion drove back to Philadelphia from the riot that has since landed them all in the crosshairs of the FBI, Healion, prosecutors said Thursday, seemed to already sense what was coming.

He sent a message to the encrypted Proud Boys group chat noting that the initial bipartisan outrage over the events of Jan. 6 “shows that a lot of [people] aren’t ready to go to the next level.”

He added: “That’s probably a bad thing in the long run.”