Attorney: Feds planted evidence on Jan. 6 defendant

FPI / February 15, 2023

A document which was likened to a blueprint for the takeover of U.S. government buildings on Jan. 6, 2021, which has been entered by prosecutors as evidence in the trial of a member of the Proud Boys, was sent by government operatives to "frame or implicate" J6 defendants, an attorney for members of the Proud Boys who are on trail said in a court filing.

According to a motion submitted on Friday by attorney Roger Roots, it appears the government authored the mysterious “1776 Returns” document.

"The mysterious document was sent unsolicited to Proud Boy Chairman Enrique Tarrio’s Telegram right before January 6th by a 'love interest' named Erika Flores," Gateway Pundit's Cara Castronuova reported on Feb. 13.

Flores reportedly testified before the now defunct Select Committee on Jan. 6 that an Intelligence Community (IC) official wrote “1776 Returns” in full and asked her to share it with Tarrio.

Tarrio has been charged with seditious conspiracy and currently stands trial in D.C. along with Proud Boys members Dominic Pezzola, Zachary Rehl, Ethan Nordean, and Joseph Biggs.

Roots wrote in the motion:

“It appears that the government itself is the author of the most incriminating and damning document in this case, which was mysteriously sent at government request to Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio immediately prior to January 6 in order to frame or implicate Tarrio in a government- created scheme to storm buildings around the Capitol. As such, Exhibit 528-1 and the government’s efforts to frame or smear defendants with it, constitutes outrageous government conduct. This is either entrapment or outrageous government conduct, or both. Equally improper, it is a Brady violation because the Department of Justice must surely have known these revelations before putting Special Agent Dubrowski on the stand on February 9 to introduce this evidence.”

According to the motion, an individual by the name of Samuel Armes is responsible for writing “1776 Returns”. Armes is “a former State Department and Special Operations official” who was interviewed by the Select Committee.

According the the motion, Armes said “he recognized components of the document as ideas he had composed as part of a 'war gaming' exercise he did in August or September of 2020. Armes co-founded a Florida-based cryptocurrency LLC — Government Blockchain Systems. Armes said that in college he had been groomed to join the CIA and FBI before his stint in the State Department and special operations. . . . In his studies, he often participated in 'war gaming' scenarios, skills he used during his stint in government."

The Select Committee was resistant to releasing the "1776" documents.

According to the motion filed by Roots: "During Special Agent Dubrowski’s chilling testimony, Assistant U.S. Attorney Conor Mulroe took lengths to emphasize segments of the document describing a plan to lay siege to Capitol Hill by strategically occupying most of the congressional office space around the Capitol. Jurors were informed of this written plan to “fill buildings” “with patriots”—and were left to think it was a plan of Tarrio’s or co-defendants."

The "1776" document laid out a plan for the occupation of eight key buildings on Jan. 6, 2021, including the House and Senate office buildings and the Supreme Court. The strategy included a call for the mass-mobilization of followers, invoking the sentiment and spirit of 1776 and the 1917 storming of the Winter Palace by Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution.

Federal prosecutors have denied planting evidence on Tarrio in order to frame him and other Proud Boys defendants, saying that assertions made by defense counsel are “simply incorrect.”

“The government robustly agrees with defendant Pezzola that it would have been egregiously improper for a member of the U.S. intelligence community to have conducted a domestic intelligence operation targeting Enrique Tarrio, a U.S. person, and providing him with a plan to ‘storm’ (or ‘occupy’ or ‘sit in’) House and Senate office buildings on January 6,” the Department of Justice wrote in a court filing late on Feb. 13.

“Defendant Pezzola’s allegation that ‘new information reveals that the '1776 Returns' document were (sic) authored by the government itself’ is simply incorrect,” prosecutors wrote.

The Proud Boys defendants were accused of seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct official proceedings, obstruction of official proceedings, and conspiracy to prevent certain federal officers from performing their duties on Jan. 6. Tarrio, Rehl, Nordean, and Biggs face nine criminal counts, while Pezzola is charged with 10.

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