FBI had informants in Proud Boys, court documents suggest

The FBI had as many as eight informants inside the far-right Proud Boys in the months surrounding the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, recent court papers indicate, raising questions about how much federal investigators were able to learn from them about the violent mob attack both before and after it took place.

The existence of the informants came to light over the past few days in a flurry of veiled court filings by defense lawyers for five members of the Proud Boys who are set to go on trial next month on seditious conspiracy charges connected to the Capitol attack.

In the papers, some of which were heavily redacted, the lawyers claimed that some of the information the confidential sources had provided to the government was favorable to their efforts to defend their clients against sedition charges and was improperly withheld by prosecutors until several days ago.

In a sealed filing quoted by the defense, prosecutors argued that hundreds of pages of documents related to the FBI informants were neither “suppressed” by the government nor directly relevant to the case of the Proud Boys facing sedition charges: Enrique Tarrio, the group’s former leader; Joseph Biggs; Ethan Nordean; Zachary Rehl; and Dominic Pezzola.

Because all of the material remains under a highly restrictive protective order, it is not possible to know what the informants told the government about the Proud Boys’ role in the Capitol attack or how that information might affect the outcome of the trial.

A closed court hearing was held Monday to discuss the informants in U.S. District Court in Washington. Lawyers for the Proud Boys have asked Judge Timothy Kelly, who is overseeing the case, to dismiss the indictment — or at least delay the trial to give them more time to investigate the newly revealed informants.

Kelly made no decision at the hearing, according to a notice placed on the docket after the proceeding ended. Because it was sealed, journalists were not allowed in the courtroom.

The dispute about the informants in the Proud Boys came on the heels of revelations that the FBI also had a well-placed source in the inner circle of Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers militia, another far-right group that took part in the Capitol attack.

Last week, lawyers for Rhodes and four other Oath Keepers who are being tried on sedition charges planned to call the informant — Greg Mcwhirter, the group’s former vice president — as a defense witness, believing that his testimony would bolster their case.

But on the eve of his planned appearance, Mcwhirter suffered a heart attack and the defense put other witnesses in his place.