Proud Boys and other right-wing extremists rally in Portland, Oregon, US, in August 2019. (AP file photo)
New York, January 17 (RHC)-- A member of the Proud Boys is going back to prison after unashamedly telling U.S. media outlet CNN that he would take part in a protest similar to the one on January 6, 2021.
Josh Pruitt’s pretrial release was revoked after he told the media outlet that he would take part in what many consider an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in favor of former President Donald Trump. “So you asked me if I’d do it again? I want to say yes,” Pruitt said. “I don’t feel I did anything wrong but knowing the consequences that came out of it would be the part that would make me question it.”
The Proud boy member has also been accused of violating his curfew and threatening others on social media.
According to District Judge Timothy Kelly, this is not the first time that he “has been admonished to comply with curfew and restrictions on his movement.” “I just don’t believe that he repeatedly is out there in the middle of the night for reasons that are beyond his control,” the judge said.
The interview comes amid reports of various stances adopted by top Republican figures in regard to Trump’s role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol, which was aimed at overturning now-President Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
According to NBC News, former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, who served under former President Trump, met last week with the House committee investigating the riot on that day. Miller had previously suggested that the Republican leader was responsible for the attack on Capitol.
"Would anybody have marched on the Capitol, and tried to overrun the Capitol, without the president’s speech? I think it’s pretty much definitive that wouldn’t have happened,” he said in an interview with Vice News in March, 2021. "The question is, did he know he was enraging people to do that? I don’t know.”
New reports have revealed that House minority leader Kevin McCarthy also made similar comments about Trump less than a week after the protest by his supporters.
A top Republican leader in the US Congress has refused to cooperate with a committee probing the deadly Jan. 6 riot on the US Capitol, slamming its work as “illegitimate” and “abuse of power. "I say he has responsibility," McCarthy said on a local radio station on Jan. 12 last year. "He told me personally that he does have some responsibility. I think a lot of people do."
