As hundreds of Donald Trump supporters arrived in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, to protest Congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s victory, Aaron Whallon Wolkind, vp of the Philadelphia Proud Boys, watched from afar brimming with anticipation for what he anticipated to unfold that day.

“I need to see hundreds of normies burn that metropolis to ash,” he wrote in an encrypted chat channel that members of the right-wing group had been utilizing to coordinate their actions that day. “The state is the enemy of the folks.”

Throughout Pennsylvania, one other Proud Boys chief watching remotely — John Charles Stewart of Carlisle — responded, utilizing a time period members used to confer with Trump backers who weren’t instantly affiliated with the Proud Boys motion.

“It’s going to occur,” he wrote. “These normiecons haven’t any adrenaline management. They’re like a pack of untamed canine.”

That change was amongst hundreds recovered by FBI brokers and introduced as proof within the seditious conspiracy trial of 4 of the group’s prime leaders — together with Zach Rehl, president of the Philadelphia chapter — who had been convicted Thursday of serving to to orchestrate the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.

However it was simply one of many dozens of reveals that demonstrated that the Proud Boys’ culpability for the chaos to come back on Jan. 6 prolonged properly past Rehl and his codefendants — particularly in Pennsylvania.

» READ MORE: For Philly Proud Boys president Zach Rehl, sedition conviction for Jan. 6 assault rests largely on his personal phrases

Testimony and proof introduced all through the four-month trial confirmed that Proud Boys from the state performed an outsized function in shaping the group’s plans for that day and getting ready for its march on the Capitol.

Listed here are 4 takeaways from what the trial revealed:

Pa. Proud Boys had been closely concerned within the planning for Jan. 6

A lot of the proof introduced in the course of the trial arose from the encrypted chats Proud Boys leaders used to organize for his or her presence in Washington on Jan. 6 — many arising from a channel on Telegram dubbed the “Ministry of Self-Protection.”

Initially, the channel was solely open to handpicked leaders throughout the group, together with Rehl, who glided by the deal with “Captain Trump,” and a few of his codefendants like Proud Boys’ nationwide chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio; Ethan Nordean, of Washington state; and Joe Biggs, of Florida.

However Wolkind, 39, and Stewart, 45 — each Proud Boys from Pennsylvania, who weren’t charged alongside the opposite leaders — had been additionally early and frequent members within the chats, in response to proof introduced on the trial.

» READ MORE: Proud Boys trial: Zach Rehl, the right-wing group’s Philly chief, and three others convicted in Jan. 6 sedition case

Neither man was in Washington in the course of the Capitol riot, however it was Stewart — utilizing the deal with “Johnny Blackbeard” within the chats — who initially urged in a voice memo within the channel that Proud Boys ought to focus their efforts in Washington on the “entrance entrance to the Capitol constructing.”

Tarrio responded the subsequent day: “I didn’t hear this voice be aware till now, you need to storm the Capitol.”

Wolkind, the vp of the Philadelphia chapter who used the web moniker “Aaron of the Bloody East,” raised the suggestion as early as Jan. 1 that the Proud Boys ought to keep away from carrying the black and gold shirts they sometimes put on to rallies — a tactic he credited to antifa counterprotesters wearing all black they usually clashed with.

“We should always begin adopting [antifa] black bloc type techniques — not all black like antifa, however make efforts to cover identifies in public,” he wrote.

Wolkind additionally urged early on that the Proud Boys’ “disposition towards the police must be reevaluated.”

Historically, the group had seen itself as allied with regulation enforcement all through the Could 2020 racial justice protests that arose after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Nonetheless, after a December 2020 rally in Washington that noticed violent clashes with counterprotesters, a number of Proud Boys members stabbed, and the arrest of Tarrio for burning a Black Lives Matter banner, members of the group started to activate authorities.

Prosecutors on the sedition trial stated that shift in angle formed the Proud Boys’ willingness to combat with police defending the Capitol constructing and cited communications within the “Ministry of Self Protection” chats.

“We might have ran police the f — over in DC and so they wouldn’t have been capable of do sh—,” Stewart wrote within the chat channel on Jan. 1, referring to that disastrous rally in December.

One other member responded: “#f—theblue.”

“Agree,” Stewart shot again. “They selected their f — g aspect so let’s get this finished.”

As Proud Boys gathered in Washington early on Jan. 6, Stewart’s rage towards police appeared to not have abated.

“I’ll settle,” he wrote to the others, “with seeing them smash some pigs [police] to mud.

A number of Philadelphia Proud Boys had been on the bottom in Washington on Jan. 6

Although Rehl was the one member of the Philadelphia Proud Boys charged within the sedition case that wrapped up this week, a number of different members of the native chapter have been accused of enjoying a task within the riot.

Stewart, who was charged individually, has pleaded responsible to costs of conspiring to hinder Congress on Jan. 6, a lawyer for Tarrio stated at a listening to main as much as the sedition trial. That case stays beneath courtroom seal.

It’s unclear whether or not Wolkind has been charged. FBI brokers raided his Newark, Del., house in October 2021.

» READ MORE: FBI raids house of Philadelphia Proud Boys’ vp to assemble information about Capitol assault plans

In the meantime, most of the Philadelphia Proud Boys who traveled with Rehl to Washington have been charged with varied crimes, together with illegally demonstrating on Capitol grounds. They embody Isaiah Giddings, 31, and Freedom Vy, 37, each of Philadelphia, and Brian Healion, 33, of Higher Darby.

Every is accused of following Rehl into the constructing, the place they had been photographed carousing within the workplace of U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.)

Giddings has pleaded responsible to a disorderly conduct cost and awaits sentencing.

Throughout his responsible plea, he informed authorities that as he superior with Rehl and the others by the chaos unfolding on the Capitol steps, Rehl requested others within the crowd whether or not they had introduced any bear spray. However Giddings stated he didn’t suppose Rehl ever obtained any.

About that bear spray…

Within the preliminary indictment, prosecutors didn’t accuse Rehl of personally finishing up any acts of violence in the course of the riot. Nonetheless, that modified as he selected to testify in his personal protection.

On the witness stand, Rehl sought to painting himself as a staunch supporter of regulation enforcement who had no thought how violent the Capitol riot had turn out to be till it was over.

However throughout days testifying beneath sympathetic questioning from his legal professional Carmen Hernandez, prosecutors uncovered new police bodycam footage that appeared to indicate Rehl spraying what seemed like pepper or bear spray at an officer.

Confronted with that footage throughout cross-examination, Rehl at first insisted that he couldn’t make sure the person within the video was him. Then, he stated that the article within the man’s hand seemed to him extra like a recording gadget than a twig can.

Finally, he informed Assistant U.S. Legal professional Erik Kenerson, that he didn’t recall attacking any officers that day.

Nonetheless, at the very least one juror stated the video proved decisive in his determination to convict Rehl.

“Rehl actually obtained caught on cross examination after he was adamant that he by no means sprayed a police officer,” juror Andre Mundell informed VICE Information in an interview printed Friday. “On cross that each one fell aside when the video got here out and it confirmed that he was spraying in direction of the cops.”

The evolution of the Proud Boys Philadelphia chapter

Throughout his time on the witness stand, Rehl testified that when he grew to become the group’s chief in 2018 he’d hoped to show the chapter from a gaggle that primarily operated as a males’s ingesting membership right into a extra regimented group — one concerned in political activism and higher about removing hotheaded recruits liable to inflicting bother.

Nonetheless, prosecutors confronted him with a number of textual content messages between him and Wolkind, the Philadelphia chapter’s vp, to counter his suggestion that violence wasn’t an integral a part of the Philadelphia chapter’s operations.

“I don’t purchase the entire PB’s are too violent, too degenerate, and many others., to be efficient at political organizing,” Wolkind wrote to Rehl in June 2019 as they mentioned a video exhibiting a Proud Boy punching a counterprotester. “I feel folks see [the attacking Proud Boy] knock that antifa the f — out and it conjures up them. They see that and secretly need to be him … That’s why folks flock to us in droves.”

Rehl responded that the “punch was superior.”

“I like what he did in that video,” he stated. “It motivates folks to affix, however I feel it provides the fallacious impression … I feel rallies and working for workplace and making an precise distinction will make or break us. Throwing down occasionally helps … It simply can’t be the one factor we’re about.”

Prosecutors additionally introduced texts by which Rehl referred to a recruit as a “beast” and “able to crack skulls” or expressed a need for all members of the Philadelphia chapter to be “jacked.”

On the witness stand, Rehl dismissed the insinuation that an important qualification for changing into a Philadelphia Proud Boy was a penchant for throwing punches.

“I used to be searching for guys who might maintain their very own” in a combat, he stated. “Doesn’t imply I used to be searching for violence.”