President Trump has spent the past half decade working with his allies on a revisionist history of Jan. 6, 2021, trying to rebrand the rioters who breached the Capitol that day as persecuted patriots and transform an act of political violence into what he once described as a “day of love.”
The latest chapter in that alternate account was written on Saturday evening when 300 people gathered at an arts center in West Palm Beach, Fla., down the road from Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence. They were there for the debut screening of “American Martyrs,” a new documentary about the far-right Proud Boys who went from being prosecuted for the Capitol attack to being granted clemency by the president.
The gala gathering — with its swag bags and red carpet — was MAGA’s version of a Hollywood premiere, Oscar night as seen through the eyes of the Trumpist faithful.
Here were some of the Proud Boys flexing for the cameras in front of an oversize promotional photo of their film.
There was George Santos, the convicted fraudster and former Republican congressman, standing in the check-in line to secure his V.I.P. badge.
And over there was Rudolph W. Giuliani, the presidential friend and disbarred New York lawyer, sitting for an interview with Gateway Pundit — the producer of the movie — as Penelope, his 3-month-old puppy, snuggled in his lap.
The surreal soiree, M.C.ed by Lara Logan, the former “60 Minutes” correspondent, was part cultural event, part Trump rally — albeit without the president himself. There was a charity auction ($1,500 for an American flag diorama designed by one of the rioters) and a panel talk where Mr. Giuliani and Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, asserted (to cheers of “civil war!”) that Jan. 6 was a plot by deep-state Democrats to entrap Mr. Trump’s supporters.
Then, of course, there was the evening’s main event, a 90-minute portrayal of the five convicted Proud Boys — Enrique Tarrio, Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola — as victims of a criminal justice system bent on destroying them for their political beliefs.
“I was in solitary confinement — now I’m on a movie poster,” Mr. Tarrio said during the mix-and-mingle before the screening. “When you demonize people so much you overdo it, that’s what happens.”
While the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6 was broadcast live on television and exhaustively detailed in more than 1,500 criminal cases as undermining a bedrock of democracy, it is still subject to polarized interpretations. And from the outset of the evening, the audience of lock-jawed Palm Beach matrons and leather-vested Bikers for Trump needed no encouragement to believe that the Proud Boys were innocent of the crimes of which they had been accused.
“We’re here to pay tribute to these men who were prosecuted,” Ms. Logan said as she took the stage, “for a crime that never happened.”
In reality, the crimes that the Proud Boys were convicted of — including engaging in seditious conspiracy — were among the most serious faced by any of the rioters who took part in the Capitol attack. And they paid a stiff penalty. Mr. Tarrio alone was sentenced to 22 years in federal custody, the longest prison term issued in any of the cases.
Their trial, which took place over four months in Federal District Court in Washington, was, like all trials, marked by legal challenges. The government used a novel theory of conspiracy law to connect the five defendants to other members of the group who directly assaulted the police and never quite provided a smoking gun of their purported plan to disrupt the lawful transfer of presidential power.
Still, the evidence showed that the transfer of power had indeed been disrupted — and that it was in no small part because dozens of Proud Boys, acting under the control of the defendants, played a leading role in multiple breaches of the Capitol’s security.
Even Mr. Trump’s own Justice Department, which sought to have the case dismissed against the will of the judge who oversaw it, has drawn a line at accepting the idea that the Proud Boys were wrongly prosecuted. Much to the chagrin of Mr. Tarrio and his co-stars, the department is, at least for now, fighting a lawsuit they filed last year claiming that the agents and prosecutors who worked on the case subjected them to “political persecution” as “allies of President Trump.”
Not that anyone, under the influence of the free drinks and passed hors d’oeuvres on Saturday, wanted to hear about such details.
“The movie’s called ‘American Martyrs,’” said Peter Ticktin, a pro-Trump lawyer who is representing more than 400 Jan. 6 rioters in their own suits against the government. “That’s for a reason.”
Before the screening started, Jim Hoft, the founder of Gateway Pundit and a producer of the film, thanked the evening’s sponsors. They included, he said, USA Trump Store, an online portal for presidential merchandise, and Able Child, a patients’ rights organization dedicated, according to its website, “to protecting full informed consent and the right to refuse psychiatric services.”
The panel talks followed. Mr. Flynn and Mr. Giuliani went first, joined by Simone Gold, a physician and leading anti-vaccine activist who was sentenced to 60 days in prison after pleading guilty to illegally entering the Capitol.
The conversation veered quickly from the subject of the Proud Boys to broader conspiracy theories about, as Ms. Logan posed the question, who was “really behind” the events of Jan. 6. Mr. Flynn said it was “a shadow government” led by former President Barack Obama. (It was not.) Mr. Giuliani, somewhat less assertively, said that while it might have been Mr. Obama, it could also have been members of the far-left movement known as antifa. (Many rioters themselves have denied this was true.)
“From that same day, I knew it was a setup,” Mr. Giuliani said. “Do I know everyone involved? No. But I know we didn’t do it. They did it.”
Then the Proud Boys took the stage to a standing ovation. Some of their buddies, having enjoyed the open bar, hooted and hollered from the back of the room.
Under questions from Ms. Logan, Mr. Biggs admitted that he was tired of talking about Jan. 6 but would keep on talking so that people would not forget about the day. Mr. Nordean, a new father, suggested that the great strength of the Proud Boys, who have fought on the streets with their political opponents for a decade, was their ability to “be present.”
Mr. Pezzola, the most reserved member of the group, pointed to his wife, who was sitting in the audience, and thanked her for sticking with him. And Mr. Tarrio said that while most defendants end up turning on one another, none of his compatriots ever “snitched.”
“You know what these guys did?” he said. “They told the government to go pound sand.”
With that, the crowd jumped to its feet, chanting, “USA! USA!”
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