Upon resuming office, President Donald Trump immediately pardoned roughly 1,500 people charged with and convicted of crimes for their actions on Jan. 6, 2021. Many, including within his own party, were stunned by the sheer volume of pardons, as they’d expected a more measured approach.
Within days, all who remained incarcerated—some with well over a decade left on their sentences—were released.
Although the vast majority of the J6ers, as they're known, received full presidential pardons, 14 did not. Instead, their sentences were commuted, meaning they were released from serving any additional time, but the convictions remain on their records.
Joe Biggs is one of those 14. Today he’s determined to do everything he can to right this perceived wrong.
“I kind of find that to be bulls***,” he said. “But it is what it is.”
Biggs talked about Trump, his conviction, prison, and the Proud Boys in wide-ranging conversations with the Daily Dot at the Conservative Action Political Conference (CPAC) this weekend. He’s spent much of the last month since he reentered society trying to get someone, anyone to convince Trump to pardon him. Now he's among a group of convicted J6ers who are making plans to sue the government.
But first he wants a full pardon like nearly all of the others received. Biggs said he’s heard a lot of yeses. Thus far none has translated into action.
“They all say, ‘We're going to help you,’ and then no one will return a call or answer anything,” he said over coffee on Saturday afternoon. Sun streamed through the glass wall of the atrium of the Gaylord National Resort & Convention just outside the nation’s capital, reflecting off his glasses and dancing across the silver Proud Boys ring he wore.
Biggs said he hopes to have his military benefits reinstated, including healthcare and college tuition for his daughter. That won’t happen unless he’s pardoned or the original charges against him are dropped.
As we talked, Trump was soon to take the CPAC stage. Biggs had no plans to watch Trump’s speech, however, explaining that his combat experience coupled with his incarceration, much of which he says he spent in solitary confinement, has made him uncomfortable in crowds.
“I've never liked being around people. Now, I really just can't stand being around a lot of people at all. Just, it's overwhelming,” he said.
From combat to handcuffs
Biggs is an Army combat veteran who was wounded in Iraq. After being released in 2013 on what he says was a medical discharge due to his injuries, the Purple Heart recipient found his way into the media, including working for Alex Jones at InfoWars.
Like many veterans, he missed the camaraderie of his service days. This may have been part of what drew him to the Proud Boys.
Biggs first encountered the Proud Boys in 2016, he said, but wasn’t impressed by the group’s Austin, Texas chapter, whose members he described as “feminine dudes.”
After moving to Florida, Biggs became friends with Tarrio. He ultimately joined the Proud Boys around the time of Trump’s first election. To hear Biggs tell it, both he and the Proud Boys are deeply misunderstood.
He lightheartedly likens the group to either a “political club with a drinking problem or a drinking club with a political problem.”
Biggs acknowledged that it has a reputation for violence, but insisted that he was never involved in any of it. He said the Proud Boys were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 to provide security for an event and that they weren’t wearing their customary yellow and black colors out of respect for the local chapter, which asked them not to, suggesting it had nothing to do with avoiding detection.
According to him, he was sitting down eating chicken fingers when he heard Trump over the radio telling them to go to the Capitol. What he described as a sea of people started moving in that direction; they had some time before their next engagement, he said, so he suggested they join them.
“That's probably the worst f****** thing I ever did,” he said of that decision. He described his subsequent conduct as that of someone bewildered by the events unfolding around him and not, as the Justice Department claimed, as a leader of a plot to attack the Capitol. He recalled seeing a man knock a fence over, after which he said the crowd surged forward towards another barricade and stopped. (In a release announcing his prison sentence, the Justice Department wrote that Biggs was in a group that breached barricades and tore down fencing. It also claimed that at some point that day Biggs boasted, “We’ve gone through every barricade thus far.”)
Four years on, Biggs claims that Capitol Police, not protesters, initiated the violence that day. Many who were there and their supporters have long blamed the police.
“Everyone's just sitting there chilling, and then, for some reason, they shoot into the crowd. Flash bangs start going off, and the whole thing erupts,” he said. A chilling scene unfolded around him. “There was blood all over the place. That really inflamed the crowd, I mean. But I've been in combat and I've been around stuff, so I know to chill out,” Biggs recalled.
No officers were charged with crimes associated with their conduct that day. Roughly 140 officers were injured.
Within months, Biggs was arrested. Two years later, he was among a handful who were convicted of seditious conspiracy associated with the events of Jan. 6. He was sentenced to 17 years in prison. He was acquitted of assaulting officers and destroying government property.
According to him, the government greatly overstated his role in the riot.
“They all made it out to seem like I was the actual mastermind, the genius, because of my military experience,” he said.
Biggs maintains that this isn’t true. If he had been the mastermind behind some plot to take the Capitol that day, he quipped that he did a “pretty s***y job.” Why, he said, would someone with his training choose to enter a restricted area at a point that was guarded, rather than one of the many he says weren’t? Why did they allow media with cameras—one of which recorded Tarrio meeting with Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes in a parking garage near the Capitol on Jan. 5, 2021 (Biggs says he wasn’t there)—to tag along and film them in the days prior? Why weren’t they armed?
“If you're gonna overthrow the government, probably smart to, you know, bring guns and s***. Nobody did. So, that's like the lamest,” he said.
He conceded that at least one Proud Boy had some kind of weapon, an ax handle, he thinks, but said that there’s always one outlier in every crowd.
As for the document, “1776 Returns,” detailing plans for that fateful day, Biggs said he knew nothing of it until it was introduced as evidence in his trial. Feds said that Tarrio, who was not in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 due to an unrelated weapons charge, had this document in his possession. Biggs claims someone Tarrio knew wrote it and that no one in the Proud Boys had even read it.
He also said that at the time he had no expectation that Trump would remain president.
“I don't even think I even had that as a thought in my head. It's over and you lost,” he said. He compared those who believed otherwise to flat earthers or people convinced that birds aren’t real.
Biggs didn’t testify at trial. He said it wouldn’t make any difference because the jurors had already made up their minds.
At his sentencing, Biggs claimed that he was done with the group.
“When Jan. 6 came up, that was my last time ever going out with the Proud Boys…” NBC News reports he said during the sentencing hearing. “I was going to announce to the group that I'm done."
He also reportedly took responsibility for his actions, saying, “I know that I have to be punished, and I understand.”
Pleading his case at CPAC
Much has changed since Biggs purportedly spoke through tears in the courtroom that day. Years spent in a cell will make their mark on anyone. Biggs described a quintessentially hellish prison experience that included witnessing violence and gang activity, frequent transfers, and years in solitary confinement.
He now says he believes he was convicted for being a Proud Boy, not for his actions on Jan. 6. Biggs complained that prosecutors essentially tainted the jury with videos of other Proud Boys doing bad deeds.
The political winds have shifted significantly over the last four years, as have feelings in some corners about the J6ers. Trump is president again and Biggs, along with everyone else convicted over the events of that day, is free. He’s also back hanging out with his old buddies. On Friday night at CPAC, he was at a sports bar with a jubilant group that included Tarrio and other Proud Boys.
He characterized his relationship with the group as a friend on the peripheral, saying he’s “not really with them.”
“We hang out at night and stuff like that, but I don't really have any desire to go around and hey, look at me,” he said.
Biggs’ CPAC badge had “Proud Boy,” “propaganda czar,” and “psyop wizard” handwritten on it. The latter two are his arguably tongue-in-cheek titles with the group.
When I pointed out that he could be using this interview to spread propaganda, he conceded that it was possible.
“That’s a good argument. Yeah,” he said. “I mean, could be, but I just, like in trial, my story’s never changed with anything. I got the same thing to say today as I would tomorrow. Usually, people who do that kind of stuff will have so many stories made up, and they can't really keep their story straight.”
When Trump commuted his sentence, Biggs had served four of his 17-year sentence. Now he’s hoping not just for a pardon, but for the charges against him to be dropped.
On Saturday, Tarrio told me that he’s optimistic that this will happen for Biggs and others, possibly as soon as next week. He wouldn't get into particulars about why he believes this is the case. As we spoke, a man approached to shake his hand and thank him for everything he does.
“The case will be thrown out,” Tarrio said.
The White House did not respond to an emailed inquiry about Tarrio’s claim sent on Sunday morning.
Now Tarrio, Biggs, and other Proud Boys are planning to fight back against a government they claim unjustly persecuted them.
They announced that they intend to sue the Justice Department during a press conference at the Capitol on Friday. The news as overshadowed by Tarrio's subsequent brief arrest for assault. Biggs said charges weren't filed. Well before the Ronald Reagan Dinner was slated to begin at 7:30pm local time, Tarrio was back at CPAC in apparently good spirits.
On Saturday, Tarrio and Biggs both told me that they have been in contact with a lawyer who may represent them in their case against the government, though they refused to name the attorney. If they do prevail in this lawsuit, they could be paid handsomely for the time they spent behind bars.
Biggs doesn’t quite share Tarrio’s confidence in this outcome, however. Perhaps this is because he’s one of the few who did not receive a full pardon, at least not yet.
“So far, it's always just been talking, and no one's really giving me a solid answer,” he said. “So I keep coming to these events hoping maybe I'll run into someone who actually can do something, but it's yet to happen.”
Internet culture is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here. You’ll get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.
Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.
The post EXCLUSIVE: Longtime Proud Boys lieutenant wasn’t pardoned over the Capitol riot. Now he may sue the government appeared first on The Daily Dot.
from Tech https://ift.tt/J5XTnIQ
0 Comments