Article March 2021

FBI agents recruited a Proud Boys leader to provide them with information about antifa networks months before he was charged with storming the U.S. Capitol with other members of the far-right extremist group, a defense attorney says.

Proud Boys “thought leader” and organizer Joseph Biggs agreed to provide the FBI with information about anti-fascist activists in Florida and elsewhere after an agent contacted him in late July 2020 and arranged to meet at a restaurant, Biggs’ lawyer, J. Daniel Hull, wrote Monday in a court filing.

The two agents who met with Biggs wanted to know what he was “seeing on the ground," Hull said. Over the next few weeks, Biggs answered an agent's follow-up questions in a series of phone calls.

"They spoke often," added Hull, who is petitioning a judge to keep Biggs out of jail pending trial.

The defense lawyer's claims buttress a widely held view among left-leaning ideological opponents of the Proud Boys that law enforcement has coddled them, condoned their violence and even protected them during their frequent street brawls with anti-fascists. The Proud Boys even have counted some law enforcement officers among their ranks, including a Connecticut police officer and a Louisiana sheriff's deputy.

https://www.click2houston.com/news/politics/2021/03/30/lawyer-fbi-enlisted-proud-boys-leader-to-inform-on-antifa/