A man wears a Proud Boys vest in Portland, Ore., on Sept. 26, 2020.
As Donald Trump yet again tells his supporters he can lose Tuesday only if there's massive voter fraud and as he ramps up violent rhetoric about Democrats and other "enemies," members of the far-right group that put more "boots on the ground" than any other at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, say they're mobilizing.
The last time Trump tried to overturn his election loss, the Proud Boys played a critical role, jumping into action on Jan. 6 just weeks after Trump gave the group a major recruitment boost by telling it to “stand back and stand by” during a presidential debate. The group, which was “thirsting for violence and organizing for action,” sent members to the Capitol to act as “Donald Trump’s army,” federal prosecutors said later. Several Proud Boys leaders were ultimately convicted of seditious conspiracy and are still in prison, including former chairman Enrique Tarrio, who is serving 22 years, the longest sentence given to any Jan. 6 defendant.
But the decentralized all-male far-right group remains active around the country, and some of its members are openly making plans to get involved in Tuesday’s elections, as Trump closes his campaign by talking about shooting through the media; calls his political opponents “evil,” “dangerous” and “the enemy within”; and spreads more baseless predictions of election fraud.
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At least 30 of the 34 active and public Telegram channels operated by Proud Boys chapters across the country have once again been rallying support for Trump, posting pro-Trump content since the beginning of October, according to an analysis by Advance Democracy, a nonprofit research organization. Many groups are posting memes and content that suggest that the 2024 election will be stolen from Trump.
Two Proud Boys chapters, both based in Ohio, say they'll be watching the polls on Election Day, according to posts reviewed by NBC News. The Proud Boys of Columbus recently posted a claim that they had enrolled members as poll watchers and poll workers.
“The task is simply too important to trust to regular normies,” a post reposted Monday read, “so it was an all-hands-on-deck effort.”
Another Proud Boys group in Ohio recently posted that it was “watching polls everywhere” ahead of Election Day.
“Locked, loaded, and ready for treasonous voter fraud,” an account wrote Sunday before it added an anti-gay slur. “Stand back and stand by f-----s.”
Three other Proud Boys Telegram channels elsewhere in the country have also shared an image of a masked man holding a gun with the words "FREE MEN DO NOT OBEY PUBLIC SERVANTS" emblazoned over him, the report from Advance Democracy found.
The Proud Boys' chapters and other active militia groups have not, as of Monday, made explicit public calls to interfere in Tuesday's elections, Advance Democracy and an NBC News review of social media posts show. And it's not clear whether claims that they are watching the polls or are embedded as election volunteers will result in any real-world action.
But Proud Boys members are clearly active. NBC News spotted men dressed in the Proud Boys uniform — gold-collared black polos — in a section at a Trump rally on Sunday, but it wasn’t clear whether the people had previously been identified as men associated with the group. NBC News observed Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., nearby and avoiding taking photos with the men.
The Proud Boys chapters are decentralized, but they've spent the time since Jan. 6 wedging themselves into other right-wing issues. Members of the group have shown up at school board meetings over library books, as well as anti-LGBTQ demonstrations and anti-immigration protests, and, although they have been weakened, Proud Boys could still organize around the election.
What happens depends largely on how Trump performs. Eight years ago, during Trump’s 2016 run for president, the founder of another right-wing organization announced a plan to go “undercover” at polling places, saying he would go “incognito” and “blend in” with the public.
Trump won in 2016. Four years later, that founder, Stewart Rhodes and his group, the Oath Keepers, went on to participate in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy and is serving 18 years behind bars.
The Proud Boys messages were sent over Telegram, which has become the preferred platform of far-right groups, where they can spread their content freely. It has become a hotbed of election misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Federal authorities have been swift to strike down misinformation from foreign actors during this cycle, but they face restraints — because of both law and tradition — when it comes to striking down misinformation that emerges from American-based political entities, and federal authorities play only a limited role in overseeing elections.
Trump — who was indicted by a federal grand jury and accused of using false voting fraud claims to try to overturn his election loss in 2020 — has a long history of making false claims about the election, even tweeting after Mitt Romney's loss in 2012 that Americans needed "a revolution" and that Americans should "fight like hell," the phrase he would invoke on Jan. 6.
Heading into Tuesday, he has increasingly used authoritarian language that invokes violent images: telling Capitol attack conspiracy theorist and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that House Jan. 6 committee Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney wouldn’t be such a “war hawk” if she had guns “trained on her face” and saying he wouldn’t “mind that so much” if a theoretical attempted assassin were to “shoot through the fake news.”
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