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

As thousands of Donald Trump supporters arrived in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, to protest Congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s victory, Aaron Whallon Wolkind, vice president of the Philadelphia Proud Boys, watched from afar brimming with anticipation for what he expected to unfold that day.

“I want to see thousands of normies burn that city to ash,” he wrote in an encrypted chat channel that members of the right-wing group were using to coordinate their movements that day. “The state is the enemy of the people.”

Across Pennsylvania, another Proud Boys leader watching remotely — John Charles Stewart of Carlisle — responded, using a term members used to refer to Trump backers who were not directly affiliated with the Proud Boys movement.

“It’s going to happen,” he wrote. “These normiecons have no adrenaline control. They are like a pack of wild dogs.”

That exchange was among thousands recovered by FBI agents and presented as evidence in the seditious conspiracy trial of four of the group’s top leaders — including Zach Rehl, president of the Philadelphia chapter — who were convicted Thursday of helping to orchestrate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

But it was just one of the dozens of exhibits that demonstrated that the Proud Boys’ culpability for the chaos to come on Jan. 6 extended well beyond Rehl and his codefendants — especially in Pennsylvania.

» READ MORE: For Philly Proud Boys president Zach Rehl, sedition conviction for Jan. 6 attack rests largely on his own words

Testimony and evidence presented throughout the four-month trial showed that Proud Boys from the state played an outsized role in shaping the group’s plans for that day and preparing for its march on the Capitol.

Here are four takeaways from what the trial revealed:

Much of the evidence presented during the trial arose from the encrypted chats Proud Boys leaders used to prepare for their presence in Washington on Jan. 6 — many arising from a channel on Telegram dubbed the “Ministry of Self-Defense.”

Initially, the channel was only open to handpicked leaders within the organization, including Rehl, who went by the handle “Captain Trump,” and some of his codefendants like Proud Boys’ national chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio; Ethan Nordean, of Washington state; and Joe Biggs, of Florida.

But Wolkind, 39, and Stewart, 45 — both Proud Boys from Pennsylvania, who were not charged alongside the other leaders — were also early and frequent participants in the chats, according to evidence presented at the trial.

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

Neither man was in Washington during the Capitol riot, but it was Stewart — using the handle “Johnny Blackbeard” in the chats — who initially suggested in a voice memo in the channel that Proud Boys should focus their efforts in Washington at the “front entrance to the Capitol building.”

Tarrio responded the next day: “I didn’t hear this voice note until now, you want to storm the Capitol.”

Wolkind, the vice president of the Philadelphia chapter who used the online moniker “Aaron of the Bloody East,” raised the suggestion as early as Jan. 1 that the Proud Boys should avoid wearing the black and gold shirts they typically wear to rallies — a tactic he credited to antifa counterprotesters dressed in all black they often clashed with.

“We should start adopting [antifa] black bloc style tactics — not all black like antifa, but make efforts to hide identifies in public,” he wrote.

Wolkind also suggested early on that the Proud Boys’ “disposition toward the police needs to be reevaluated.”

Traditionally, the group had seen itself as allied with law enforcement throughout the May 2020 racial justice protests that arose after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

However, after a December 2020 rally in Washington that saw violent clashes with counterprotesters, several Proud Boys members stabbed, and the arrest of Tarrio for burning a Black Lives Matter banner, members of the group began to turn on authorities.

Prosecutors at the sedition trial said that shift in attitude shaped the Proud Boys’ willingness to fight with police defending the Capitol building and cited communications in the “Ministry of Self Defense” chats.

“We could have ran police the f — over in DC and they wouldn’t have been able to do sh—,” Stewart wrote in the chat channel on Jan. 1, referring to that disastrous rally in December.

Another member responded: “#f—theblue.”

“Agree,” Stewart shot back. “They chose their f — g side so let’s get this done.”

As Proud Boys gathered in Washington early on Jan. 6, Stewart’s rage toward police appeared not to have abated.

“I will settle,” he wrote to the others, “with seeing them smash some pigs [police] to dust.

Though Rehl was the only member of the Philadelphia Proud Boys charged in the sedition case that wrapped up this week, several other members of the local chapter have been accused of playing a role in the riot.

Stewart, who was charged separately, has pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to obstruct Congress on Jan. 6, a lawyer for Tarrio said at a hearing leading up to the sedition trial. That case remains under court seal.

It is unclear whether Wolkind has been charged. FBI agents raided his Newark, Del., home in October 2021.

» READ MORE: FBI raids home of Philadelphia Proud Boys’ vice president to gather info about Capitol attack plans

Meanwhile, many of the Philadelphia Proud Boys who traveled with Rehl to Washington have been charged with various crimes, including illegally demonstrating on Capitol grounds. They include Isaiah Giddings, 31, and Freedom Vy, 37, both of Philadelphia, and Brian Healion, 33, of Upper Darby.

Each is accused of following Rehl into the building, where they were photographed carousing in the office of U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.)

Giddings has pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct charge and awaits sentencing.

During his guilty plea, he told authorities that as he advanced with Rehl and the others through the chaos unfolding on the Capitol steps, Rehl asked others in the crowd whether they had brought any bear spray. But Giddings said he didn’t think Rehl ever obtained any.

In the initial indictment, prosecutors did not accuse Rehl of personally carrying out any acts of violence during the riot. However, that changed as he chose to testify in his own defense.

On the witness stand, Rehl sought to portray himself as a staunch supporter of law enforcement who had no idea how violent the Capitol riot had become until it was over.

But during days testifying under sympathetic questioning from his attorney Carmen Hernandez, prosecutors uncovered new police bodycam footage that appeared to show Rehl spraying what looked like pepper or bear spray at an officer.

Confronted with that footage during cross-examination, Rehl at first insisted that he couldn’t be sure the man in the video was him. Then, he said that the object in the man’s hand looked to him more like a recording device than a spray can.

Eventually, he told Assistant U.S. Attorney Erik Kenerson, that he did not recall attacking any officers that day.

Still, at least one juror said the video proved decisive in his decision to convict Rehl.

“Rehl really got caught on cross examination after he was adamant that he never sprayed a police officer,” juror Andre Mundell told VICE News in an interview published Friday. “On cross that all fell apart when the video came out and it showed that he was spraying towards the cops.”

During his time on the witness stand, Rehl testified that when he became the group’s leader in 2018 he’d hoped to turn the chapter from a group that primarily operated as a men’s drinking club into a more regimented organization — one involved in political activism and better about weeding out hotheaded recruits prone to causing trouble.

However, prosecutors confronted him with several text messages between him and Wolkind, the Philadelphia chapter’s vice president, to counter his suggestion that violence wasn’t an integral part of the Philadelphia chapter’s operations.

“I don’t buy the whole PB’s are too violent, too degenerate, etc., to be effective at political organizing,” Wolkind wrote to Rehl in June 2019 as they discussed a video showing a Proud Boy punching a counterprotester. “I think people see [the attacking Proud Boy] knock that antifa the f — out and it inspires them. They see that and secretly want to be him … That’s why people flock to us in droves.”

Rehl responded that the “punch was awesome.”

“I love what he did in that video,” he said. “It motivates people to join, but I think it gives the wrong impression … I think rallies and running for office and making an actual difference will make or break us. Throwing down from time to time helps … It just can’t be the only thing we’re about.”

Prosecutors also presented texts in which Rehl referred to a recruit as a “beast” and “ready to crack skulls” or expressed a desire for all members of the Philadelphia chapter to be “jacked.”

On the witness stand, Rehl brushed off the insinuation that the most important qualification for becoming a Philadelphia Proud Boy was a penchant for throwing punches.

“I was looking for guys who could hold their own” in a fight, he said. “Doesn’t mean I was looking for violence.”