In a Bizarro World lawsuit against the federal government, Proud Boys who were pardoned by President Donald Trump for their roles in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol are alleging “cruel and unusual” treatment and “politically motivated” prosecutions. They seek a minimum of $100 million in damages for alleged “violations of their constitutional rights.”
The suit is brought by former Proud Boys honcho Enrique Tarrio along with lieutenants Zachary Rehl, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, and Dominic Pezzola. The plaintiffs were all convicted of serious felonies — up to and including seditious conspiracy — for their roles in plotting or executing the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and were serving long prison terms until Trump took office and pardoned or commuted their sentences.
Now, the Proud Boys want to get paid. The 28-page lawsuit casts the right-wing extremist group as nothing more than a “patriotic activist organization for young men.” The suit contends that the men were victims of an “egregious and systemic abuse of the legal system” intended to “punish and oppress political allies” of Trump.
The language of the filing is consistently over-the-top. “The government got its fondest wish of imprisoning the J6 Defendants,” it recounts of the men’s trials. It calls their treatment “the modern equivalent of placing one’s enemies’ heads on a spike outside the town wall as a warning to any who would think to challenge the status quo.”
The lawsuit presents an unrecognizable recounting of the men’s behavior. It insists that none of the men took actions to “obstruct the proceedings at the Capitol, destroy government property … or participate in civil disorder, nor did they plan for or order anyone else to do so.” This appears in strong tension with the facts on which they were convicted and sentenced. Tarrio, for example, gloated in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 violence: “Make no mistake… we did this.” Pezzola used a stolen police shield to bash in a window at the Capitol.
The lawsuit also alleges “cruel and unusual” pre-trial abuses in jail — including unjustified solitary confinement, denial of proper medical care and access to lawyers, and “violations of attorney-client privilege.”
The men assert that the government “displayed an open bias and visceral distaste for the Plaintiffs’ moral, social, political, and religious viewpoints,” and that their prosecutions were driven by “animus” and “a desire to see them punished … for their politically incorrect beliefs.”
The suit, filed in federal district court in Florida, seeks $100 million in punitive damages. It also seeks unspecified “compensatory damages,” as well as attorneys fees. The litigation notes that copies were sent to top Trump loyalists Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Kash Patel, the director of the FBI who once wrote that calling Jan. 6 an insurrection was just a “disinformation narrative” designed for “one purpose: to destroy dissent.”
During his first day in office, Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 1,500 Jan. 6 criminals, including many violent offenders, and members of the Oath Keepers also convicted of seditious conspiracy. He has also weighed creating a compensation fund for those incarcerated. Trump has recently doubled down on this upside-down view of law and order by appointing a legal champion of violent Jan. 6 defendants as his lead pardon attorney.
www.rollingstone.com
#Proud #Boys #Freed #Trump #Sue #Government #Million
