Thread by @jennycohn1

Proud Boys organizer Joe Biggs is a dangerous and supremely damaged human being. Someone decided to put this obvious powder keg of a man in a position to explode. Having gone back over the sequence of events, it appears to me that this “someone” was probably Roger Stone. 1/

Biggs lost his job at InfoWars in early 2017, apparently bc Biggs was promoting other non-InfoWars ventures, which made Jones upset. In mid 2017, Biggs resurfaced at Stone’s side to support a California politician named Omar Navarro (who lost his race). 2/

Biggs also was photographed w/ Stone in July 2018 & he cavorted w/ Stone’s Florida posse of miscreants in late 2018 as well. That Dec, after the Proud Boys assaulted 10 people in NY, the group reorganized w/ Enrique Tarrio as the chairman & Biggs as his right hand man. 3/

Tarrio (also of Florida) was close w/ Roger Stone as well. So two men w/ close ties to Stone were suddenly in charge of a violent gang of thugs w/ chapters across the country. What cld go wrong? 4/

Biggs was damaged before Stone sunk his claws into him. He was a disaster waiting to happen. Stone must have known this. 5/

https://twitter.com/jennycohn1/status/1485461927107067904

6/ Biggs had obvious violence issues too.

7/ Stone seemed to celebrate Biggs’s violent tendencies.

8/ But here’s the thing. Compare the Joe Biggs who had a brief gig at RSBN (after leaving InfoWars in Feb 2017) ….

https://twitter.com/NozNewz_com/status/829115615004729346

… with this Joe Biggs, the one who became a leader of the Proud Boys after Roger Stone had taken him under his nefarious wing. He’s suddenly much more theatrical, yes? Almost a cartoon character. Theatrics is the hallmark of a Roger Stone operation. 9/

https://twitter.com/sanhotree/status/1418644237311225860

10/

11/ Roger Stone teaches his protégés that “to get noticed you have to be outrageous.”

12/ The pre-Stone Joe Biggs was plenty bad. But under Stone’s apparent mentorship, he took it to a much higher level. It’s as if “someone” gave him a part to play on a reality show.

13/ To show u what I mean, here’s Stone’s longtime assistant wearing a white wig. There are photos of him doing this to impersonate elections director Brenda Snipes at a 2018 Stop the Steal event, but OSINT researchers keep deleting their Twitter accounts so I can’t find them!

14/ Here’s a good Proud Boys photo to illustrate Roger Stone’s penchant for “performance art” with dangerous real life consequences. Politics as theater is his hallmark.

15/ Here again, Roger Stone assistant Jacob Engels w/ Proud Boy Taylor Whyte Ziolkowski. “Performance art.” Yes, there are less than burly Proud Boys. These are the Proud Boys who help w/ propaganda & smear campaigns.

16/ The hat is a nice touch. Very Stone-esque. Biggs was given a part to play. Who hired him? My money is on Roger Stone.

https://twitter.com/ALT_uscis/status/1267161439820750848

17/ “To get noticed you have to be outrageous” - Roger Stone.

18/ I almost feel sorry for Joe Biggs bc Roger Stone used him & walks free, while Biggs will likely go to prison for a very long time. I say “almost” bc imho Biggs deserves to go to prison for a very long time. But it was likely Stone who put him in a position to self-detonate.

19/ Joe Biggs w/ Stone and Stone’s posse in 2018 (the year he joined the Proud Boys).

20/ Correction: the Proud Boys brawl in New York was in October 2018, not December 2018. Here's some info from Wikipedia about the incident.

21/ More info. from Wikipedia re: the Proud Boys brawl in New York in 2018, which led to founder Gavin McInnes's nominal withdrawal from the organization and Enrique Tarrio's appointment as the group's new chairman.

22/ Eek. Check out the guy who very briefly served as the Proud Boys national chairman after McInnes but before Tarrio. via @Mediaite mediaite.com/online/meet-th…

23/ Tarrio is the bald guy with glasses in the back row of this photo with Stone from July 2018.

24/ "In January 2017, Biggs announced that he was doing a pilot show for Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN), a pro-Trump online channel. The show was to be dedicated to guns and the Second Amendment, and the pilot episode was posted online." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biggs

25/ Biggs's "online TV show was not produced following the pilot, following the reporting on Biggs' history of pro-violence comments on social media." (In other words, Biggs probably went to Stone looking for a "job.") en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biggs

26/ "According to court documents, [Joe Biggs] joined the Proud Boys in 2018 and became an organizer for the group. Biggs has compared planning for Proud Boys events to 'planning to go into a combat zone.'" npr.org/2021/04/09/985…

27/ "In one case, [Biggs] recorded a video of himself holding an American-flag-themed bat with spikes on the end, saying he was preparing to 'bust some heads.' He also wore a T-shirt with the phrase 'Training to Throw Communists Out of Helicopters' emblazoned on the front."

28/ Ack. One more correction. There were four victims of the Proud Bouds brawl in New York. Not ten. The number ten is the number of people connected to the Proud Boys who were involved in the brawl. I shld never go from memory. Receipts every time.

29/ Jacob Engels "donned a gray wig and a pantsuit in imitation of Broward County elections chief Brenda Snipes." It's driving me crazy that I can't find the video/photo that I'm thinking of. thedailybeast.com/meet-jacob-eng…

30/ I wrote this up and more here. buckscountybeacon.com/2023/02/januar…

.@threadreaderapp please unroll