In a move right out of President Donald Trump’s playbook, members of the Proud Boys, a right-wing extremist group, have filed a $100 million lawsuit against the U.S. government contending their rights were violated when they were arrested and convicted for crimes connected to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Trump supporters were trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election of former President Joe Biden.
Trump should understand the move, given his long history of using the courts to retaliate against his perceived enemies. And his administration just settled a $30 million wrongful death lawsuit by the family of Ashli Babbitt. The 35-year-old was shot and killed while trying to climb through a broken window during the assault. Her family agreed to settle for $5 million.
Now, five Proud Boys, who were part of the more than 1,500 Capitol attackers pardoned on the first day Trump took office, want their slice of the pie and see the possibility of a huge windfall. The group, including former leader Enrique Tarrio, who received a 22-year prison sentence for leading the attack, argues they were victims of “corrupt and politically motivated persecution” intended to punish Trump’s political allies, according to AFP.
In the suit filed in federal court in Florida, the plaintiffs argue they were victims of “egregious and systemic abuse of the legal system and the United States Constitution to punish and oppress political allies of President Trump,” by the FBI and the Biden-era Department of Justice.
They’re accusing the agency and DOJ of a range of charges, including “evidence tampering, witness intimidation, violations of attorney-client privilege, and placing spies to report on trial strategy.”
The suit also compares the prosecution of the Jan. 6 crimes to “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 Proud Boy members are requesting a jury trial and $100 million in damages.
In a press conference Friday in Lafayette Park on the north side of the White House, former Proud Boys leader Tarrio announced the lawsuit, “This is not just a lawsuit. This is a reckoning,” according to a post about the event on X.
His attorney had even stronger words, claiming the Biden DOJ had “mortally wounded” the American legal system.
Social media reaction was quick and cutting.
Lawyer Fernando Oliver said the suit should be tossed out. “Proud Boys are a domestic ultra-right terrorist gang, the U.S. equivalent of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua. They organized the storming of the capital and should not be allowed to sue.”
At least nine people died in connection with the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, according to the New York Times, and more than 100 police officers were injured. The rioters attacked after a fiery speech from Trump, falsely claiming he had won the 2020 presidential election and urging his followers to take action by marching to the Capitol.
