Proud Boys Act As Security Force For Roger Stone

Jared Holt reports at Right Wing Watch:

Waiting outside the courthouse were a gaggle of members of the right-wing hate group the Proud Boys, including Stone mentee Jacob Engels, Big League Politics writer Luke Rohlfing, and Proud Boys president Enrique Tarrio. Rohlfing told us he financed his own trip to Washington for the arraignment hearing. The Proud Boys have been repeatedly drafted as Stone’s personal security force and the group has backed Stone as he prepares to possibly stand trial in the Mueller investigation.

The Proud Boys carried signs depicting Infowars founder Alex Jones (Stone currently works as an Infowars contributor) and posters advertising a fundraiser for Stone’s legal defense that contained a misspelling of the word “verified.” At one point after Stone entered the courthouse, Engels and a heckler engaged in a heated screaming match before they were separated by police.

The Daily Beast reports:

Stone has repeatedly used the Proud Boys as a security force, sometimes with other Republicans’ blessing. The organizer of a GOP conference in Oregon last March defended Stone’s decision to bring the hate group, telling Willamette Week that Stone “was worried about getting killed… He gets death threats constantly.”

Stone previously told The Daily Beast that his Proud Boy security contingent was a volunteer force due to the “large number of death threats I have received and the many potentially violent and physical attacks on me in public spaces when I travel.” Now the Proud Boys are helping Stone.

At Stone’s press conference outside a Fort Lauderdale courthouse on Friday, Tarrio was one of two Proud Boys to arrive in “Roger Stone Did Nothing Wrong” shirts. The back of the shirt advertises the link to a website where Stone’s supporters can donate to his legal defense fund.