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Two New York men, newly identified by the Department of Justice as members of the Proud Boys, were slapped on Friday with additional conspiracy charges in connection with the riot on the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
Dominic Pezzola, 43, of Rochester, and William Pepe, 31, of Beacon, were charged in federal court in the District of Columbia with conspiracy, civil disorder, illegal entry into restricted buildings or land and disorderly and disruptive conduct in restricted buildings. or patterns.
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Pezzola was also charged with obstructing official proceedings, with additional counts of civil unrest and aiding and abetting civil unrest; theft of personal property in the United States; assault, resist or interfere with certain officers; destruction of government property; and engaging in physical violence in small buildings or areas.
Pepe and Pezzola were originally indicted by a criminal complaint and arrested on January 12 and 15, respectively, the District of Columbia’s U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement on Friday.
Pepe was suspended from his $ 73,000-a-year job with the Metro Transit Authority after apparently calling sick on Jan.6 to travel to Washington for the planned insurgency.
Meanwhile, Pezzola, who prosecutors say is also called “Spaz,” “Spazzo” or “Spazzolini,” is now accused of having digital bomb-making manuals on a hard drive recovered from his residence in Rochester. He is known to have lit what appeared to be a cigar inside the Capitol while taking video of himself, claiming on camera that he had ‘victory smoke’.
According to the prosecution documents, both men are members of the Proud Boys, a far-right nationalist group that describes itself as “a pro-Western fraternal organization for men who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world. ; aka the western chauvinists ”.
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Proud Boys members often wear the colors yellow and black, as well as other clothing adorned with logos and emblems related to the Proud Boys, the Justice Department said. It is alleged that Pepe and Pezzola own tactical vests bearing the Proud Boys logo and have attended various Proud Boys rallies and protests.
The two men allegedly removed temporary metal barricades restricting access to Capitol grounds and stole Capitol Police property. Pezzola is also accused of confronting a Capitol policeman who was trying to control the crowd, ripping off his riot shield.
Another video which has been widely disseminated shows Pezzola using this shield to smash a window on the Capitol building, according to Friday’s indictment.
Prosecutors seek to keep Pezzola jailed until trial because his “offer to surrender to law enforcement did not come until the FBI started knocking on doors in the Rochester, New area. York, seeking to speak to members of his family, “the government wrote in a memorandum calling for pre-trial detention.
FBI agents executing a search warrant at Pezzola’s residence on the day of his arrest recovered a USB drive containing hundreds of .pdf files containing “step-by-step instructions for making homemade firearms, poisons and / or explosives, ”the memo reads.
A series called “Advanced Improvised Explosives” included several series, including “Explosive Dusts” and “Incendiaries”; “The Box Tube MAC-11”, with caption “The UltimateDIY Machine Pistol”; “Ragnar’s Big Book of Craft Weapons”; and “The Arsenal of the Advanced Anarchist: Recipes for Incendiaries and Improvised Explosives”.
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The government note states: “All of the above examples contain detailed instructions on how to make the subject matter reflected in their titles, and these are just four of the hundreds of similarly titled .pdf files on the USB drive recovered. “
A witness interviewed by the FBI said members of a group, which included Pezzola, spoke of their participation in the assault on Capitol Hill and said they killed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the former deputy. -President Mike Pence if they’d had the chance. .
The group reportedly planned to return to Washington for the presidential inauguration on Jan.20, according to the memo.
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