‘I think it’s a horrible idea’: Philly Proud Boy who had concerns about storming the Capitol pleads guilty in Jan. 6 attack

As members of the Philadelphia Proud Boys muscled their way onto the upper west terrace of the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021 — the scene of some of the most intense fighting that day — chapter member Freedom Vy had reservations.

Word had spread among the crowds that Vice President Mike Pence had just been evacuated from the building. And amid the chaos, Zach Rehl — head of the militant, right-wing organization’s Philadelphia wing — suggested that he and the other members of his group head inside to see history unfold.

“I think it’s a horrible idea,” Vy responded in a conversation caught on cell phone video. “But I’m not letting you go alone.”

That decision cemented Vy’s involvement in the riot at the Capitol that caused more than $3 million in damage, left scores of officers injured, and threatened the peaceful transfer of presidential power. He pleaded guilty Tuesday to participating in the attack, making him the fourth member of the Philadelphia Proud Boys convicted of doing so.

Vy, 39, Southwest Philadelphia, did not respond to requests for comment after a court hearing in Washington at which he entered his plea to one misdemeanor count of illegally entering a restricted area. His attorney, Alfred Guillaume III, declined to discuss the case.

He now faces up to a year behind bars at a sentencing hearing scheduled for September.

And while federal prosecutors have charged more than 1,400 people across the country with taking part in the Capitol riot, Proud Boys members from Pennsylvania have played a significant role.

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

Rehl, who led the Philadelphia chapter from 2018 until his arrest in 2021, is currently serving a 15-year sentence on sedition charges at a federal prison in Petersburg, Va. A jury found him and three other top Proud Boys leaders from other parts of the country guilty last year of planning the violence that unfolded that day.

Two others from the Philadelphia chapter who traveled to Washington with Rehl and Vy — Brian Healion, 33, of Drexel Hill, and Isaiah Giddings, 31, of Philadelphia — await sentencing after pleading guilty to misdemeanor crimes.

And at least two other members from Pennsylvania – Aaron Whallon Wolkind, the former vice president of the Philadelphia chapter, and John Charles Stewart, a member from Carlisle — have been implicated in prosecutors’ account of the Proud Boys’ actions that day, though neither of them appears to have been charged.

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

For his part, Vy, in court filings surrounding his guilty plea, acknowledged participating in a series of encrypted group chats with Proud Boys from across the country in the days leading up to Jan. 6.

Adopting the handle “Freedom Reigns,” he and the others discussed plans for 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 the 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 building?”

Vy, Rehl, Giddings and Healion set out from Philadelphia on Jan. 5, trading emergency contact info and blood types before their trip — as if, prosecutors have suggested, they were expecting some sort of violence that day.

And on the morning of Jan. 6, Vy said, he and the others joined a crowd of nearly 100 Proud Boys and sympathizers marching from the Washington Monument to the Capitol building.

The Philly Proud Boys were among the first crowd of rioters to burst through the security perimeter around the Capitol building after another area man, Ryan Samsel, 40, of Bristol, helped topple police barricades — an act that prosecutors describe as the inciting incident of the riot.

They paused to snap selfies of themselves making the “OK” hand gesture adopted by the Proud Boys and other white power groups as they fought their way up to the upper west terrace. Rehl sent one of those photos to a group chat of Philadelphia chapter members with the caption: “Bada— pic in DC.”

Vy said that all around him he witnessed rioters assaulting police. And as officers struggled to reestablish a security perimeter, he broke off from his fellow Proud Boys to taunt them.

“We used to back you guys,” he shouted across the barricades to cops struggling to fight off the mob in a scene caught on video. “I know you signed up for a noble job. You meant well when you signed up … but you guys chose your side.”

When Rehl proposed entering the Capitol itself — minutes after rioters had breached the building and interrupted congressional certification of 2020 presidential election — Vy followed, despite his earlier misgivings. 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 through a smashed window 20 minutes after they entered, prosecutors said. They headed back to Philadelphia the next day, but not before — Rehl told jurors at his 2023 trial — stopping off to buy cases of beer to drink along the way.

But even as Vy, Rehl, Healion and Giddings drove home from the riot that has since resulted in all of their criminal convictions, Healion seemed to already sense what was coming.

He sent a message to the encrypted Proud Boys group chat lamenting that the initial bipartisan outrage over the events of Jan. 6 wasn’t exactly the response he and the others were hoping for.

“It shows that a lot of [people] aren’t ready to go to the next level,” he wrote. “That’s probably a bad thing in the long run.”