Jan. 6 Testimony: Top Proud Boy Dishes on Beef With Oath Keepers

The connection between the Oath Keepers militia and the Proud Boys has been a subject of fascination for anyone trying to puzzle together the events of Jan. 6, 2021. The two far-right groups were instrumental in storming the Capitol. Their leaders were both hit with seditious conspiracy charges. But were they actively working together? After all, the two groups were infamously caught on film in a surreptitious Jan. 5 meeting in an underground hotel parking garage in Washington D.C.

The Jan. 6 Committee released key transcripts from its investigation Wednesday evening. Many witnesses — from Roger Stone to Nick Fuentes to Gen. Michael Flynn — stonewalled the committee, repeatedly invoking their Fifth Amendment rights to avoid answering potentially incriminating questions. But former Proud Boys chair Enrique Tarrio — now on trial for sedition — was a notable exception. He spoke at length to investigators about his actions leading up to the insurrection, and pulled no punches when dishing on his beef with the Oath Keepers and their leader Stewart Rhodes, who was recently convicted of sedition himself.

The relationship between the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys was one of bad blood, according to Tarrio. He claimed the ill will stemmed from a logistical mess at a protest years earlier in Portland, Oregon, that left hundreds of Proud Boys stranded. During the period after the 2020 election, Tarrio testified, “I still was on the F- Oath Keepers train.”

Tarrio downplayed the Jan. 5 meeting in the garage of the Phoenix Park hotel, filmed by a documentary crew, by insisting that Rhodes “just happened to be there” and that his encounter with the Oath Keepers leader was perfunctory: “I just shook his hand and I said hello.”

The Proud Boy then elaborated: “Me and Stewart Rhodes didn’t get along, or don’t get along, for a very long time, since 2019.” He added that his previous communiques with Rhodes involved “a lot of F-bombs, different versions of the F-bomb” and that he’d taken to calling “the whole Oath Keepers group the ‘Oath Breakers.’”

Asked to explain the conflict, Tarrio told the story of a direct action both groups showed up for in Portland, Oregon, where they anticipated a showdown with anarchist and Antifa. Rhodes, Tarrio said, had talked a big game on an internet chatboard about how the Oath Keepers would have busses as their disposal to move right-wingers in and out of the progressive city. “He was supposed to be our transport,” Tarrio said.

Instead, Tarrio recalled, “he pulled out on us last-minute.” He said the move left hundreds of Proud Boys by the side of the road trying to hail rides after the rally. “Imagine sitting in a street corner with 300 people, and all these people are ordering Ubers. It was next to impossible to get these people out of the city of Portland,” Tarrio said.

The incident left Tarrio embittered toward the Oath Keepers: “Ever since then, I did not talk to Stewart Rhodes. I didn’t like Stewart Rhodes. I still don’t like Stewart Rhodes.” He said of their garage meeting that he’d swallowed his distaste and made nice, “I didn’t want to be rude,” he said. “I shook his hand.”

Tarrio went on to testify that in the period leading up to Jan. 6 he and his Proud Boy crew were often at the same events with Oath Keepers but that they kept their distance. “After that event in Portland, I didn’t want to have anything to do with Oath Keepers or militias or anything like that.” He said as a general matter, “I don’t like working with others” and of Rhodes in particular: “he had already screwed us over once, and I’m like — I’m not dealing with this.”

Before the Jan. 6 investigators, Tarrio went out of his way to rag on militia groups, insisting that he couldn’t be bothered to tell the difference between the Three Percenters and Oath Keepers he saw at Trump rallies. “I’m being honest here,” he said. “A bunch of older White dudes in camouflage are hard to tell one from the other — like, I can’t tell them apart.”

Tarrio seemed to think the Oath Keepers were a bunch of dorks. He said that when (now-convicted seditionist) Oath Keeper Kelly Meggs bragged in a December 2020 text of having “formed an alliance” with the Proud Boys, the militiaman was puffing himself up. “I get people that name-drop me all the time,” Tarrio testified. “But I can guarantee you that there was never any coordination between me or any Oath Keepers or Three Percenters.”

When pressed on the fact that members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys entered the Capitol within minutes of each other, Tarrio (who was not on the ground in D.C. that day) responded: “I mean, anybody that went into the Capitol within that time frame can be accused of working with the Oath Keepers. We don’t have a history of working with the Oath Keepers.”

Tarrio’s lawyer piped up that the top Proud Boys found the Oath Keepers “embarrassing” and that there had been “some very weird Oath Keepers fantasies” about collaborations with the Proud Boys. Tarrio insisted that while members of both organizations swear oaths, the Oath Keepers take it too far. “They were just a little bit too serious for my taste,” Tarrio testified. “We don’t take the oaths too — that seriously.”

Despite their stylistic differences, Tarrio and his top deputies face the same seditious conspiracy charge that the government brought against Rhodes and top Oath Keepers: Of trying to block the transfer of presidential power by force. Jury selection in the Proud Boys trial began this week. Opening arguments are expected to begin in the new year. The trial is expected to last at least six weeks.