From WNYC Studios, I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Wednesday, May 3rd.

Today could be another important day in the accountability and court era of what Donald Trump has brought down upon the nation

personally or existing dark forces that he helped to empower. In this case, it's the latter.

The dark force is the white male nationalist group, the proud boys. A jury is deliberating the

fate of five leaders of the proud boys in connection with their

alleged leadership roles in the violent parts of the January 6th insurrection.

There are several specific charges in this case, nine altogether, going all the way up to

seditious conspiracy, but in essence they're being accused of planning the use of force to prevent Congress from

certifying the election. Now, this trial has gotten remarkably little press coverage considering

the stakes and that it took four months to hear. Now it's in the hands of the jury. Interestingly,

one of the defenses being used in this case, from what I've read, is that

Proud Boy's leader Enrique Tario didn't cause the violence at the Capitol on January 6th.

Donald Trump himself did. The defense claims Tario is being tried as a scapegoat for Donald Trump.

Let's get more now, including indications yesterday of some

trouble the jury may be having in reaching its verdicts with Marcy Wheeler, a journalist who

writes about civil liberties and national security, and runs the website Empty Wheel, which is

doing in-depth coverage of the Proud Boys trial. Empty Wheel is also Marcy Wheeler's Twitter handle.

Marcy, thanks for coming on.

Welcome to WNYC.

Thanks for having me.

Could we start with some of the basics, which I think many of our listeners probably don't know

as little coverage as this trial has gotten?

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