Back in September, Enrique Tarrio, the former chairman of the Proud Boys, was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison on “seditious conspiracy” charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, raid of the U.S. Capitol.
According to the Justice Department, the far-right group “played a central role in setting the January 6th attack on our Capitol into motion,” and as its leader, Tarrio created a special group within the militant organization called the Ministry of Self Defense that “established a chain of command, chose a time and place for their attack, and intentionally recruited others who would follow their top-down leadership and who were prepared to engage in physical violence if necessary.” As his Proud Boys were storming the Capitol and assaulting police officers, Tarrio urged them on in encrypted group chats and on social media, later writing, “Make no mistake… we did this.”
The key link between the Proud Boys and the Trump campaign appears to be none other than Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative dating back to the days of Richard Nixon who Ted Cruz once called “Trump’s henchman and dirty trickster.” Stone, one of the architects of Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign following his 2020 election loss, reportedly hired the Proud Boys as his security at a 2018 GOP conference in Oregon, and Tarrio has been captured on several occasions wearing a T-shirt that read, “Roger Stone is innocent.” The House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 attack revealed that Stone regularly communicated with Proud Boys members, including Tarrio, in the months leading up to the insurrection in an encrypted group chat called Friends of Stone.
And now, in a video clip provided exclusively to Rolling Stone, Stone can be seen talking with Tarrio by phone on Nov. 5, 2020, at Stone’s office in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The clip is taken from Christoffer Guldbrandsen’s documentary A Storm Foretold, which chronicles how Stone’s “Stop the Steal” campaign led to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. The film will be released in select theaters on Jan. 5.
“Stone had been busy, launching ‘Stop the Steal’ and mobilizing Trump allies and had just gotten off the phone with General Flynn, when Enrique Tarrio, the national leader of the Proud Boys, called. Tarrio’s voice was inaudible, but Stone is heard telling him that he is still waiting for an update from the campaign — before he says he needs to talk without the camera rolling,” Guldbrandsen tells Rolling Stone.
Guldbrandsen and his Danish camera crew shadowed Stone for years, gradually learning of his close ties with the Proud Boys, especially Tarrio.
“Tarrio was a fixture around Stone — helping him out, working with him on his social media, and even organizing a fundraiser for Stone just before his trial,” explains Guldbrandsen. “Stone was in close contact with Tarrio right up until the attack on Jan. 6 and after via encrypted apps.”
What Guldbrandsen wants viewers of A Storm Foretold to know is that the film “demonstrates that the most violent group at the forefront of the attack on the U.S. Capitol was closely connected to the Trump campaign through Roger Stone, Donald Trump’s friend and ally for more than 30 years.”
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