Proud Boys member pleads guilty to conspiracy in Capitol robbery

Photo: ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP / Getty Images

A member of Proud Boys who, according to federal prosecutors , “played a substantial role in the assault on the Capitol” on January 6, pleaded guilty on Wednesday of conspiracy and obstruction charges.

The man, Matthew Greene , from Syracuse, New York, admitted to conspiring with other members of the group of far-right to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election of 2020. As part of his statement, Greene, an Army National Guard veteran, agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

Greene is the first member of the Proud Boys militia to plead guilty to several of the crimes he was charged with, for his participation in the assault on the Capitol in Washington on January 6.

After pleading guilty, Greene is expected to cooperate with prosecutors, which would allow him to reduce the sentence to up to 51 months in prison to which he could be sentenced. In addition to him, some thirty members not only from the Proud Boys, but also from other far-right groups, such as Oath Keepers , have been accused of conspiracy, domestic terrorism and obstruction of an official procedure.

Greene has also agreed this Wednesday in his hearing before a federal court in Washington DC pay a fine of $ 2, 000 dollars for the damage caused to the Capitol facilities , details the CNN chain.

Before him, far-right Oath Keepers have also collaborated in recent months with the authorities.

The Department of Justice maintains that Green “participated together with other insurgents, including members of the Proud Boys, erecting barricades against the agents”, once the police cordon established on the Capitol grounds was broken, after receiving radio commands from group a signed.

“I’m fine, we have taken the capital,” Greene exclaimed, according to information provided by prosecutors during the hearing, after which was returned to prison pending his sentence, which has been set for the 10 March 2022.

Those who are also at the awaiting sentence are his comrades in arms in the organization, William Pepe and Dominic Pezzola , accused in the past month of April of police obstruction, public disorder, robbery, assault on a public official and illegal entry into restricted spaces, among other charges.

In the case of Pezzola, the Department of Justice detailed that it snatched a police shield from an agent and broke one of the windows of the building through which the rest of the former president’s supporters accessed Donald Trump.

In mid-December, the District of Columbia Prosecutor’s Office filed a civil lawsuit against dozens of far-right members of these armed groups to answer also for “the millions of dollars” that the Administration allocated to quell the revolt, as well as for the medical treatment of more than

The attorney general Karl Racine filed the lawsuit under a law against the Ku Klux Klan, dating from 1871, and which was already successfully applied in November 2021 against those who organized the racist demonstrations in Charlottesville in August 2017 and in which a woman run over.

With information from Europa Press

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