Inside the F.B.I.’s Jan. 6 Investigation of the Proud Boys

In March 2021, two months after the F.B.I. arrested Dominic Pezzola, a New York Proud Boy, on expenses stemming from the Capitol assault, one of many lead brokers on the case made an uncommon confession. On Lync, the bureau’s inside chat system, she stated she felt sorry for the person she had helped take into custody.

“Is it unhealthy i nearly form of really feel unhealthy for Pezzola?” the agent, Nicole Miller, requested considered one of her colleagues.

When the colleague advised her that Mr. Pezzola was in jail due to selections he had made, Agent Miller appeared to agree. However then, she snapped again into work mode.

“Oh no i do know that,” she wrote. “His choices put him the place he’s. Simply really feel for his children. Surprise if he’s going to cooperate although.”

This behind-the-scenes change, and a whole bunch prefer it, have been contained in a log of Agent Miller’s messages on Lync, monitoring her chats with different brokers from Jan. 6, 2021, when she was on obligation on the bureau’s Washington workplace, to September 2022, just a few months after she and her group helped carry sedition expenses in opposition to Mr. Pezzola and 4 different members of the Proud Boys.

The log, obtained by The New York Instances, offers a uncommon look into one of many Justice Division’s most necessary Jan. 6 investigations. It reveals how Agent Miller and her colleagues scrambled after proof and sought to recruit members of the far-right group all whereas making an attempt to coping with the chances and ends of life — all the things from squeezing in exercises to dealing with the bureau’s out of date know-how.

A few of the Lync messages emerged not too long ago when Agent Miller took the stand on the trial of Mr. Pezzola and his co-defendants — Enrique Tarrio, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl — which is now unfolding in Federal District Court docket in Washington. On cross-examination, the lads’s legal professionals sought to make use of the log to counsel that different brokers who chatted with Agent Miller had dedicated offenses like destroying proof or scrutinizing emails between one of many defendants and his lawyer in a violation of the attorney-client privilege.

A lawyer for Mr. Pezzola described the messages as proof of a “large path of F.B.I. corruption,” however Choose Timothy J. Kelly, who’s presiding on the trial, blasted that assertion, saying it was “unfounded hypothesis that has no place in a courtroom.”

Whereas the log obtained by The Instances is lacking a number of entries, it affords probably the most intensive portrait but of the F.B.I.’s inside communications as brokers investigated the sprawling Proud Boys case.

‘Dismantling Issues’

Agent Miller, a former Florida police officer, had been with the F.B.I. for lower than two years when the Capitol was overrun.

The messages present that she was shortly named to a “conspiracy squad” of brokers inspecting the roles that far-right teams just like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia had performed within the assault.

The arrest of Mr. Pezzola and one other New York Proud Boy, William Pepe, helped Agent Miller construct an even bigger case in opposition to a number of of the folks now on trial: Mr. Rehl, who ran the group’s Philadelphia chapter; Mr. Nordean, the Seattle chapter’s so-called sergeant-at-arms; Mr. Biggs, a top-ranking Florida Proud Boy; and Charles Donohoe, a chapter president from North Carolina.

As early as March 3, 2021, Agent Miller and others within the bureau’s Washington workplace have been already discussing looking Mr. Rehl’s residence. A couple of days later, Agent Miller advised her colleagues that the bureau had gotten cellphone location knowledge on Mr. Rehl and was planning to take “the Rehl stuff” to a grand jury.

Across the similar time, she was juggling different duties.

Agent Miller was additionally organising a proper interview with a Proud Boy from New York and “studying backgrounds” on a number of different Proud Boys instances. In a separate matter, she was additionally engaged on a never-filed conspiracy indictment in opposition to the white nationalist Nick Fuentes and considered one of his allies, the far-right troll Anthime Gionet, higher recognized by his nickname Baked Alaska.

Her fellow brokers have been impressed. “Wow,” considered one of her colleagues within the Washington subject workplace wrote, “you’ve been in WFO for what, a 12 months? and you’re already dismantling issues.”

Urgent Ahead

After prosecutors obtained a conspiracy indictment in opposition to the Proud Boys leaders, Agent Miller pressed on with the case.

Within the spring of 2021, she and her group started inspecting Proud Boys chapters in St. Louis and the Hudson Valley in New York. Across the similar time, working with group chats obtained by way of their investigation, the group additionally recognized a Proud Boy in Pennsylvania, John C. Stewart, who later pleaded responsible to conspiracy expenses and cooperated with the federal government’s case.

Alongside the best way, the messages present, brokers stored in contact with their informants within the group. In April, one informant often known as “Omlette” advised his handlers that the Proud Boys would probably participate in an upcoming “White Lives Matter” rally. In June, one other informant, Kenneth Lizardo from Massachusetts, offered info for a search warrant. The messages point out different informants in Cleveland and Salt Lake Metropolis.

All through that 12 months, Agent Miller and her group have been additionally making an attempt to recruit new cooperators. One message means that Mr. Pezzola met with prosecutors in April 2021 for a proper interview often known as a proffer however didn’t find yourself cooperating with the federal government.

Nicholas Ochs, who ran the Proud Boys’ chapter in Hawaii and was charged with conspiracy one month after the Capitol assault, additionally met with prosecutors for a proffer interview within the fall of 2021. However the messages present the assembly didn’t go effectively both.

“Ochs didn’t provide us something,” Nicholas Hanak, one other agent on the case, wrote to Agent Miller.

“Yea,” Agent Hanak concluded, “no deal for him.”

‘Assist’

The breakneck tempo of the investigation was taking a toll.

By the summer season of 2021, Agent Miller was expressing fear to a colleague about dropping the comp time she had accrued. Different brokers complained about gaining weight, lacking household occasions and feeling overwhelmed by the avalanche of leads they needed to observe.

“Assist,” a colleague wrote to Agent Miller in July.

The group discovered solace the place they might. Colleagues usually requested Agent Miller if they might come go to her canine. Others talked in regards to the distractions to be present in Mexican meals and the TV present “Ted Lasso.”

In October, in a punchy change, considered one of Agent Miller’s colleagues stated she had been listening to Mr. Rehl combating together with his spouse — presumably on a monitored jailhouse line. Agent Miller puzzled if the jailed Proud Boy had found his spouse was dishonest on him, prompting the colleague to put in writing, “hahaha i’ll carry beer.”

In the identical dialog, the opposite agent stated she had learn a sequence of emails between Mr. Rehl and his lawyer on the time, Jonathon Moseley. The messages indicated that Mr. Rehl was planning to battle his expenses at trial — a undeniable fact that the opposite agent requested Agent Miller to not disclose to the prosecutors on the case, lest they “freak out.”

Mr. Rehl’s present lawyer, Carmen Hernandez, has accused the F.B.I. of violating her consumer’s rights by illegally taking a look at privileged communications together with his former lawyer. Prosecutors say Mr. Rehl had used a jailhouse e mail system that clearly acknowledged that each one of its messages have been monitored similar to the cellphone strains — a measure, they are saying, that amounted to a waiver of attorney-client privilege.

The Conspiracy Hurdle

As the primary anniversary of Jan. 6 got here and went, Agent Miller and her group continued to analyze new topics.

They started to concentrate on a bunch of Proud Boys who had been notably violent on the Capitol: Ronald Loehrke, who had been in contact with Mr. Nordean earlier than the assault befell; James Haffner, who had moved in tandem with Mr. Loehrke on Jan. 6; and two Proud Boys from Florida, A.J. Fischer and Zachary Johnson.

All 4 males have been in the end charged.

In February 2022, Agent Miller lastly caught a break in her investigation of considered one of her high targets: Enrique Tarrio, the previous chief of the Proud Boys. Firstly of the month, she advised a colleague that bureau technicians had extracted a Telegram group chat referred to as the “Ministry of Self-Protection” from Mr. Tarrio’s cellphone. Contributors within the chat performed a central position within the run-up to the Capitol assault and on the bottom on Jan. 6.

“It’s actually good,” Agent Miller wrote of the salvaged chat, including, “Enrique didn’t delete something.”

One thing else was on the cellphone, she stated: a “plan” that Mr. Tarrio and considered one of his girlfriends had “labored on.” That gave the impression to be a reference to a doc referred to as “1776 Returns,” which contained an in depth plan to surveil and storm authorities buildings across the Capitol on Jan. 6.

After calling Mr. Tarrio “an fool” for leaving such materials on his cellphone, Agent Miller’s colleague requested if the newly found info would “get us over the hurdle of the conspiracy cost?”

Agent Miller stated they might press ahead with a conspiracy case.

“We DEF can now,” she wrote.

One month later, Mr. Tarrio was arrested on an indictment charging him with conspiracy.

A Ultimate Break

There was yet one more huge break.

Two days after Mr. Tarrio was charged, considered one of Agent Miller’s colleagues wrote to say {that a} lawyer for Jeremy Bertino, a Proud Boy from North Carolina, had reached out, suggesting that his consumer was occupied with speaking to investigators. The F.B.I. had executed a search warrant at Mr. Bertino’s residence the day earlier than Mr. Tarrio’s arrest and found three AR-15-style rifles and a shotgun hidden behind a wall within the basement.

Agent Miller and her group ultimately decided that a number of the weapons have been unlicensed and could possibly be topic to a prison cost. The messages additionally present that brokers discovered a video of Mr. Tarrio chatting with Mr. Bertino whereas Mr. Bertino was at a capturing vary together with his spouse.

“We cant make these things up!!” Agent Miller wrote.

Over the subsequent a number of weeks, Mr. Bertino was interviewed a minimum of 3 times by prosecutors engaged on the case; and in October 2022, he formally pleaded responsible not solely to a gun cost, but in addition to seditious conspiracy.

In February, just a few weeks earlier than Agent Miller herself testified on the Proud Boys trial, Mr. Bertino took the stand as the federal government’s star witness.