A federal judge has revoked bail for two leaders of the Proud Boys, a paramilitary right-wing extremist group, contending that newly revealed evidence of their role in the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol has shown them to be too dangerous to remain free while awaiting trial.
Ethan Nordean of Washington state and Joseph Biggs of Florida are charged with conspiring to stop the certification of the 2020 election — and with organizing and leading dozens of Proud Boys to the Capitol, many of whom were among the earliest to breach the building.
“The defendants stand charged with seeking to steal one of the crown jewels of our country, in a sense, by interfering with the peaceful transfer of power,” Judge Timothy Kelly said as he explained his decision. “It’s no exaggeration to say the rule of law and ... in the end, the existence of our constitutional republic is threatened by it.”
Kelly’s ruling reverses earlier decisions by federal judges to release Nordean and Biggs under strict conditions. In the government’s earlier bid to detain Nordean, Judge Beryl Howell described weaknesses in the case that had been presented, and prosecutors declined to present evidence supporting their most damaging claims — in part because they were preparing to unseal a graver set of charges against Nordean and other Proud Boys leaders. That indictment was issued in March, linking Nordean, Biggs and two other Proud Boys regional leaders — Zach Rehl and Charles Donohoe — in the alleged conspiracy.
Donohoe is facing a separate detention hearing later Monday afternoon.
Kelly, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, said new evidence presented by prosecutors showing Nordean and Biggs’ men’s central role in orchestrating the incursion was a decisive factor in his ruling. He delivered a painstaking retelling of the case against the two men, reciting their profanity-laden social media posts vowing violence against lawmakers and others preparing to certify the results of the 2020 election, as well as their private communications revealed by prosecutors as the investigation unfolded.
Prosecutors say Nordean took on an expanded leadership role in the group on Jan. 4, after the Proud Boys’ national leader Enrique Tarrio was arrested upon arrival in Washington, D.C. on charges stemming from violence at an earlier pro-Trump protest. They say he helped craft the group’s tactical strategy for Jan. 6, encouraging them to divide into smaller groups and overwhelm outmatched Capitol Police. Prosecutors also spelled out efforts by the group to cover their tracks after Tarrio’s arrest, dropping earlier private messaging channels and opening up new ones.
Biggs, per the government’s case, was an on-the-ground leader in the days leading up to Jan. 6 and that morning, a point of contact for dozens of Proud Boys who traveled to Washington, D.C. for the march to the Capitol. Nordean and Biggs were among the earliest waves to arrive at the Capitol and were present when a police barrier was overrun, leading a wave of rioters to press closer to the building.
Nordean and Biggs, according to prosecutors, are also on the hook for significant damage to the Capitol caused by fellow Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola, who smashed a window with a riot shield early in the siege. Pezzola’s action, a central feature of many of the Capitol prosecutions, led to one of the earliest breaches of the Capitol.
Kelly acknowledged there was no evidence of Nordean or Biggs ordering specific criminal acts, such as the breaking of the window, but the judge said that wasn’t critical to the strength of the case.
“Those things are not necessary for a conspiracy case to be relatively strong,” Kelly said.
Kelly also described the challenges of prosecuting a conspiracy case based on circumstantial evidence — a fairly common reality since criminal conspirators rarely document their plans explicitly. But Kelly said the overwhelming volume of evidence showing that a plan existed — even if its specific contours are not entirely clear — show both men had strategized about how to stop the certification of the 2020 election.
During his lengthy ruling, Kelly joined a chorus of judges who have criticized the former acting U.S. Attorney in Washington — Michael Sherwin — over an interview last month in which he said he believed the evidence in the Capitol riot cases justified sedition charges that have not yet been filed.
“Obviously, this was a highly unprofessional interview that Mr. Sherwin gave,” Kelly said. He noted that the comments by Sherwin, who was replaced last month as head of the Capitol riot probe, have been referred to Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility for investigation.
“I am going to warn all sides here that comments that violate the local rules of this court — I’m certainly not going to put up with anything like that from the attorneys who have entered their appearance in this case from this point forward,” the judge added.
The U.S. Capitol riot launched one of the largest investigations in Justice Department history, with hundreds of defendants now facing charges. But the lawyer who’s put himself at the center of nearly 20 of the legal defenses has plenty of problems of his own—from a bizarre legal strategy and looming debts to a struggling case defending a handful of chimpanzees.
Once a high-flying civil attorney, lawyer John Pierce has reinvented himself, in the face of mountains of debt, as a go-to lawyer for conservative causes célèbres. After being fired from representing accused Kenosha, Wisconsin, murder suspect Kyle Rittenhouse over a financial dispute, Pierce has become perhaps the most public legal face of the Jan. 6 defense, representing more than a dozen clients as he tries out unorthodox legal strategies and jousts with his critics on Twitter.
But even as his star rises on the right, Pierce has been undermined by a bizarre tweet appearing to threaten federal officials, an employee facing felony charges for allegedly defrauding a grandmother, and his own financial woes.
Pierce declined to comment.
Pierce now represents at least 17 of the Jan. 6 defendants, more than any other lawyer. His clients include Proud Boy William Pepe and L. Brent Bozell IV, the son of conservative media commentator L. Brent Bozell III. Pierce also represents Ryan Samsel, an accused rioter identified by prosecutors as the man caught on video consulting with a top Proud Boy leader before attacking police officers in the riot’s first minutes.
“We are going to take every one of these cases to trial, we are going to seek full acquittals, and in that process we are going to find out what actually happened on Jan. 6,” Pierce said at a June rally in support of the riot defendants.
In one court hearing, Pierce said he would pursue a “public authority defense”—an unusual legal tactic sometimes used by informants that would see him argue that his clients believed that the government, in the form of Donald Trump, had legally sanctioned their law-breaking.
Marcy Wheeler, a national security journalist who has reported on Pierce’s court filings, suspects that Pierce is gathering so many Jan. 6 clients together to tell a story in court about “romantic patriots who are trying to save the country.” But Pierce’s ambitious legal strategy could be undermined by the fact that he has no substantial experience as a criminal defense attorney—an issue that also came up in his short term representing Rittenhouse.
“He’s not a defense attorney, and therefore he’s not an especially good defense attorney and it would take a tremendously good defense attorney to make a good public authority defense,” Wheeler said. “That’s why nobody else is trying it.”
At times, Pierce’s Twitter rhetoric can sound as overheated as some of the Jan. 6 rioters. On July 16, as debates about the door-to-door vaccination campaigns raged on the right, Pierce tweeted that a federal employee knocking on your door called for “various calibers”—an apparent reference to shooting them.
“Every instance of an unconstitutional federal knock on your door, or that of a UN blue helmet, should be met with one thing,” Pierce tweeted. “Of various calibers.”
Before his turn as one of a top lawyer for Trump supporters in legal trouble, Pierce ran an up-and-coming law firm. But his firm dissolved amid his personal problems, including a more than $800,000 tax debt to the IRS and what he’s described as substance abuse issues.
Pierce declined to comment on the meaning of his tweet. The Daily Mail has reported that Pierce once sent his ex-wife menacing messages and allegedly threatened to kill her.
To support his conservative legal causes, Pierce set up his would-be rival to the American Civil Liberties Union in June, dubbing it the National Constitutional Law Union. But his new group has already been touched by scandal.
On Thursday, Law360 reported that the NCLU’s chief financial officer, Ryan Joseph-Gene Marshall, is facing a raft of felony charges for attempting to defraud an elderly woman while working as a court clerk.
Marshall allegedly convinced a judge to sign a bogus guardianship order, which in turn helped one of Marshall’s court colleagues steal $86,000 from the woman, according to court filings. Pierce, who plans to make Marshall an associate in his fledgling firm, is representing Marshall in the case.
Despite the responsibilities of representing almost 20 Capitol riot defendants, Pierce has also signed on for another case: a fight over whether a Missouri woman must hand over her chimps to a wildlife sanctuary group after agreeing to surrender them in deal with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
The chimp case has become an unlikely cause in certain corners of the right thanks to The Gateway Pundit, a popular right-wing blog that often promotes hoaxes. While the private ownership of chimps is not typically a major issue for Trump supporters, one of the blog’s writers, who plans to own a monkey herself, has begun covering the case closely.
Earlier this month, Pierce signed onto the case. But his efforts to keep the chimps in their home have thus far been in vain, with a federal appeals court rejecting his motion for an emergency stay. Pierce has had similarly bad luck at the Supreme Court, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh rejecting his motion for a stay on Wednesday.
While Pierce has continued to amass Jan. 6 defendants, it seems that at least one may be looking for different representation. On Wednesday, Pierce client and riot defendant Ryan Samsel, who has gained prominence amid the many Jan. 6 defendants after claiming he was attacked by guards in jail, contacted the judge in his case and said he would be getting a new lawyer.
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