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Videos have circulated for the past two years of Dominic Pezzola smashing a window of the U.S. Capitol building with a riot shield on Jan. 6, 2021. When he took the stand to testify in his own defense Tuesday afternoon, he did not deny taking the police gear to the glass.
“I got caught up in all the craziness,” he said. “I broke one pane of glass, one.”
Pezzola said he was testifying not to clear his own name but because “these men over here should not be held responsible for my actions.” He meant his four co-defendants, all leaders in the far-right Proud Boys group that Pezzola had joined in late 2020.
Prosecutors have depicted Pezzola as key to a Proud Boys plot to lead the mob into violent action that would upend the 2020 election results; the window he smashed was the first breach of the Capitol building. Pezzola insisted there was no such plot.
“The craziest damn thing is I never even knew these guys before I met them here in court,”…
This article was written by Rachel Weiner and originally published on www.washingtonpost.com