Proud Boys leader visits White House on Christmas tour ahead of ‘Stop the Steal’ rally in DC

The leader of the controversial far-right group Proud Boys is set to visit the White House on Saturday as thousands of supporters of the president gathered in front of the Supreme Court to protest its decision not to overturn the election results.

Enrique Tarrio, who heads the movement that has been denounced as an extremist group, posted a photo of the White House on his Parler social media account.

‘Last minute invite to an undisclosed location…’ Tarrio, whose Parler user name is ‘Wartime Tarrio,’ wrote on Parler, which has emerged among many die-hard Trump supporters as a go-to alternative to Twitter.

‘Wow…I’m in awe,’ Tarrio wrote on Parler. He ended the post with the hashtag #Trump2020.

White House spokesperson Judd Deere told DailyMail.com on Saturday that Tarrio ‘was on a public White House Christmas tour’ and that he ‘did not have a meeting with the president nor did the White House invite him.’ 

Tarrio is among several thousand of the president’s supporters who have descended on Washington, DC, on Saturday to stage a ‘Stop the Steal’ rally denouncing the alleged ‘voter fraud’ that they say led to President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

Conservative groups that allege without evidence that Biden stole the election from Trump plan protests nationwide on Saturday, including a Washington rally headlined by Trump’s recently pardoned former national security adviser.

Organizers Stop The Steal, which is linked to pro-Trump operative Roger Stone, and church groups urged supporters to turn out to ‘Jericho Marches’ and prayer rallies. 

These are planned at Washington’s National Mall and in the capitals of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona, where Trump’s campaign has questioned vote counts.

More than 50 federal and state court rulings have upheld Biden’s victory over Trump. 

The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a long-shot lawsuit filed by Texas and backed by Trump seeking to throw out voting results in four states.

Trump has refused to concede defeat, alleging without evidence that he was denied victory by massive fraud.

The Washington rally will begin with marches around the US Capitol, the Supreme Court and Justice Department ‘with prayers for the walls of corruption and election fraud to fall down,’ according to StopTheSteal.com.

The plans reference the Biblical miracle of the battle of Jericho, in which the walls of the city crumbled after priests and soldiers marched around it.  

Retired Army General Mike Flynn, who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with the former Russian ambassador, is scheduled to speak from the high court steps, his first public address since Trump pardoned him on November 24. 

Republican political donors and religious figures, including My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell and radio host Eric Metaxas, are expected to attend.

An anti-Trump group called a rally near the White House on Saturday as well, raising the potential for a repeat of clashes that occurred on November 14.

The high court’s order was a stark repudiation of a legal claim that was widely regarded as dubious, yet embraced by the president, 19 Republican state attorneys general and 126 House Republicans. 

Trump had insisted the court would find the ‘wisdom’ and ‘courage’ to adopt his baseless position that the election was the product of widespread fraud and should be overturned. 

But the nation’s highest court emphatically disagreed.

Friday’s order marked the second time this week that the court had rebuffed Republican requests that it get involved in the 2020 election outcome and reject the voters’ choice, as expressed in an election regarded by both Republican and Democratic officials as free and fair. 

The justices turned away an appeal from Pennsylvania Republicans on Tuesday.

On Monday, the Electoral College meets to formally elect Biden as the next president.

Trump had called the lawsuit filed by Texas against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin ‘the big one’ that would end with the Supreme Court undoing Biden’s substantial Electoral College majority and allowing Trump to serve another four years in the White House.

In a brief order, the court said Texas does not have the legal right to sue those states because it ‘has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.’

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who have said previously the court does not have the authority to turn away lawsuits between states, said they would have heard Texas’ complaint. 

But they would not have done as Texas wanted – setting aside those four states’ 62 electoral votes for Biden – pending resolution of the lawsuit.

Trump complained that ‘within a flash,’ the lawsuit was ‘thrown out and gone, without even looking at the many reasons it was brought. A Rigged Election, fight on!’

Three Trump appointees sit on the high court. 

In his push to get the most recent of his nominees, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, confirmed quickly, Trump said she would be needed for any post-election lawsuits. 

Barrett appears to have participated in both cases this week. None of the Trump appointees noted a dissent in either case.

With time running out, and on the heels of a stinging defeat in the Supreme Court, Trump’s attorneys turned their attention to Wisconsin with rare Saturday arguments before the state Supreme Court.

Trump is trying to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the state with a lawsuit seeking to disqualify more than 221,000 votes in Wisconsin’s two most heavily Democratic counties. 

Trump is not challenging any votes in counties he won.

Also Saturday, former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell asked the Supreme Court to hear a federal case she lost in Wisconsin seeking to order the GOP-controlled Legislature to declare Trump the winner. 

Powell has also lost similar cases in Georgia and Arizona.

Wisconsin’s highest court agreed to take the case at Trump’s urgent request Friday, soon after a state judge ruled against him and with Monday’s Electoral College vote bearing down and the state’s 10 electoral votes about to go to Biden.

The court is controlled 4-3 by conservatives, but its willingness to take the case isn’t necessarily an indicator of how it will rule.  

The court previously refused to hear the case before it went through lower courts, and a majority of justices have openly questioned whether the remedy Trump seeks is appropriate.

Trump sought to have more than 221,000 ballots disqualified in Dane and Milwaukee counties. 

He wanted to disqualify absentee ballots cast early and in-person, saying there wasn’t a proper written request made for the ballots; absentee ballots cast by people who claimed ‘indefinitely confined’ status; absentee ballots collected by poll workers at Madison parks; and absentee ballots where clerks filled in missing information on ballot envelopes.

The circuit judge on Friday ruled that none of Trump’s arguments had merit and that state law was followed during the election and subsequent recount.

Biden won Wisconsin by about 20,600 votes, a margin of 0.6 per cent that withstood a Trump-requested recount in Milwaukee and Dane counties.

Trump and his allies have suffered dozens of defeats in Wisconsin and across the country in lawsuits that rely on unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud and election abuse. 

A Trump-appointed federal judge in Wisconsin said Thursday that the president’s lawsuit was ‘incredible,’ ‘bizarre’ and ‘very odd,’ and that overturning the results would be ‘the most remarkable ruling in the history of this court or the federal judiciary.’

US District Judge Brett Ludwig’s ruling was pending.