Feds admit they needed FBI agents at Quantico to crack Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio's cellphone.
Federal prosecutors now say encryption issues were the real reason they couldn't get into Enrique Tarrio's cell phone for a year.
AP Photo/Noah Berger
- Federal prosecutors admit they had to ask the FBI at Quantico to help crack Enrique Tarrio's cellphone.
- The phone seized from the ex-Proud Boys leader kept the feds stumped for a year.
- Six members of the extremist group are charged with conspiring to obstruct Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.
Federal prosecutors in the Capitol breach case have revealed the real reason it took so long get inside Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio's seized cell phone — they were outwitted by its technology for almost a year, and had to call in specialists from Quantico to crack it.
Prosecutors had previously been vague in explaining why it took so long to cull data from the phone, saying in a recent filing that they had promptly sought a search warrant for the device when Tarrio was arrested, two days before the attack on the Capitol.
"Despite diligence, the government was not able to obtain access to Tarrio's phone until December, 2021," the filing had said. They made no mention of encryption issues, as if it hadn't been a concern.
But during a hearing on Tuesday — during which Tarrio pleaded not guilty to conspiracy charges — Assistant US Attorney Luke Jones gave a more detailed reason.
"The government was not able to get into the phone; law enforcement that is," Jones said, adding that ultimately it had to be sent to specialists in "FBI — Quantico" to be cracked.
The delay has been an issue in the case because it also set back Tarrio's arrest, slowing the prosecution of him and his five alleged Proud Boys co-conspirators, some already jailed without bail for as long as a year.
"This doesn't pass the BS test to me," said Tarrio's former attorney, John Daniel Hull, adding that Tarrio was never even asked for his passcode.
"How believable is this," complained the lawyer, who was at the hearing representing co-defendant and accused Proud Boys co-conspirator Joseph Randall Biggs.
Prosecutors countered that they had no reason to think Tarrio would simply volunteer his phones' passcode to the government.
In fact, Tarrio had told others he "was confident that the government would not be able to get into the phone" due to the technology, Jones said.
"There's no basis for this allegation that the government was somehow dillydallying with this phone," he said.
Prosecutors had argued in court papers last week that the parties should stick to a May 18 trial date for all six Proud Boys.
But defense lawyers demanded instead that the trial date be pushed back in part due to the delay in Tarrio's arrest — and their clients be freed in the interim.
Judge Timothy Kelly declined to revisit the bail matter, but did agree to push back the trial to a future, yet-agreed-upon date.
The parties are back in court on April 21.
Tarrio and his five co-defendants are charged with conspiring to obstruct the Jan. 6 the certification of Joe Biden's presidential victory by Congress. All six have pleaded not guilty; Tarrio entered his not-guilty plea Tuesday through his lawyer and via video.
The six are alleged to have led more than 100 Proud Boys in attacking the Capitol; federal prosecutors say members of the hate group were the first to topple a barrier in storming the property, and the first to break a window to gain entry.
They are being held pending trial, some for as long as a year, including those not charged with possessing weapons, committing violence or destroying property.
Since his arrest last month, Tarrio has been held without bail simply on the strength of his alleged dangerousness and central role in the conspiracy, as prosecutors argued in court papers last month — and despite his not even being at the Capitol during the riot.
Tarrio sat out the attack in a Baltimore hotel room, where prosecutors say he continued to direct his group's actions. He had been barred from the Capitol grounds as a condition of bail, after his arrest for admittedly setting fire to a Black Lives Matter banner at a historically Black church in DC.