that they were just following the leader, donald trump, in the encouragement from him. they have been convicted of seditious conspiracy. talk to me about what s happening. reporter: that s right. they explicitly blamed donald trump. during the trial, blaming donald trump for some of the problems that the proud boys are screening new members. after the click, that was a major boon for the proud boys. they produced these stand by and stand back t-shirts. that was a lot of attention for the group, a lot of new members joining. what they were arguing is, it was difficult to vet new members. the jury didn t really buy any of that argument. ultimately, found enrique and three other members guilty of seditious conspiracy. the only individual who hasn t been guilty of seditious
we re going to go ahead and start with ryan reilly in the ongoing deliberations of the proud boys trial. ryan, where do things stand right now? reporter: that s right. for most of these defendants, four to five found guilty of seditious conspiracy, and all five were found guilty of major felonies which expose them to significant prison sentence. the only outstanding seditious conspiracy charge is against the member of the group that is on camera performing the most violence on january 6th, or the most destructive violence, seeing that video over and over again with a stolen police shield bashing in that window during the first breach of the capitol on january 6th. so that s who they re still deciding on, and the reason that the jurors, i think, sort of left that out there is there s not as much evidence of him being a long-term member of the proud boys or connected to this longer plot. he sort of did come very late in the game in terms of this broader conspiracy that the jurors found
probably we have seen on video doing the most damage or at least we have been seeing that video on a loop for two years how of that initial breach of the u.s. capitol when dominic pezzola has that stolen police shield in his hands and is using it to break open the window during the initial breach of the capitol that day. but you can see the logic in the jury s decision there in terms of why they found these four other members guilty of seditious conspiracy but not dominic pezzola, himself. sort of as you alluded to, the biggest thing here is that now the justice department has secured a verdict in a seditious conspiracy trial against someone who was not actually at the capitol. enrique tarrio was at a hotel on january 6th, which is just a little bit further from the capitol than 1600 pennsylvania avenue where donald trump was on january 6th. so, you know, this is something that could have broader implications for the jack smith investigation in terms of being
may be able to move forward on. in this trial did they have direct communications where enrique tarrio, the proud boys, are directing people what to do on the capitol that day? it was not necessarily enrique tarrio, but it was a group of them collectively understanding what was going to be done and disseminating information through their communication channels. written understanding or a nonverbal understanding of this is what we re out there to do, this is our goal there. that s part of what the difficulty was in terms of establishing the seditious conspiracy charge. if we re talking about donald trump and we re tiptoeing toward a seditious experience charge against donald trump, that s a big deal to say that, and i don t want to set up expectations, i have no idea what jack smith is considering right now, but if you re looking at what happened with enrique tarrio, do you think it s fair to even suggest that donald trump could maybe face something like that? i think it s f
be an indictment from jack smith against the former president that he could argue that under justice department rules, since he is a candidate for president, that this is too close to the election and it would be interfering with the election process by putting him under such a cloud? i have no doubt he will argue that and many other things to try to get out of being accountable to the american people. but the fact that it has taken the justice department a few years to put this case together shouldn t be an excuse to let donald trump off for another day once the department of justice is ready to bring charges. i give the doj i have been critical of merrick garland. but i give them credit for the investigations and foot soldiers they put on trial and convicted for the events of january 6 for this attempted coup. the true ring leader was donald trump. based on the evidence that we have seen, he may have been