A woman who was charged in connection to the Capitol riot bragged about being recruited by the Proud Boys

• Felicia Konold was arrested in Arizona last week in connection to the Capitol riot.
• According to the complaint, Konold said she was recruited by the Proud Boys’ Kansas City chapter.
• Her claimed acceptance into the notoriously misogynistic group has puzzled experts.
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An Arizona woman arrested on suspicion of storming the Capitol on January 6 claimed to have been recruited by the Proud Boys, a famously misogynistic far-right group. 

Felicia Konold was arrested in Arizona last week on charges of conspiracy, civil disorder, obstruction, trespassing, and disorderly conduct, according to the Department of Justice. 

According to the criminal complaint against Konold, she recorded multiple Snapchat videos after the riot detailing the event.

In one of the videos, she claimed to have been recruited by the Kansas City chapter of the Proud Boys, and displayed what she said was a membership coin.

“In the post the woman claimed that she had been told that even though she was not from Kansas City, she was ‘with them now,'” the criminal complaint said.

The revelation about Konold’s reported acceptance into a Proud Boys chapter has puzzled extremist-group experts, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. 

The Proud Boys are by definition a male-only group, describing themselves as a “pro-Western fraternal organization for men who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world,” the criminal complaint said.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has designated the Proud Boys as a hate group, said the group is “known for misogynistic rhetoric” and believe “women are happier when they stay home and have children.”

Alex DiBranco, executive director of the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism, told the AP that no one in her company is aware of a woman ever having been recruited by a Proud Boys chapter.

Cassie Miller, a senior research analyst for the SPLC, also told the AP that for a time, women formed auxiliary Proud Boys groups like the “Proud Boys’ Girls,” made up of wives and girlfriends of members.

But these women were never considered full members of the Proud Boys and she’s not aware of any of these auxiliary groups being active now.

“The group has been very clear from the beginning it is an organization for men only and they hold misogynistic beliefs and believe that women are best suited for domestic labor and should act as mothers and homemakers,” Miller said.

Eric Ward, a senior fellow at the SPLC, told the AP that Konold’s receiving a coin shows “there is dissension in the ranks of the Proud Boys right now.” 

“There is something happening around gender in the Proud Boys — and it’s something worth paying attention to,” Ward said. 

Multiple recent reports have indicated that the Proud Boys group is in disarray in the wake of the Capitol riot, particularly after its leader, Enrique Tarrio, was unmasked as a longtime FBI agent.

According to Konold’s criminal complaint, she and her brother Cory were seen on video marching toward the Capitol with a group of Proud Boys on January 6, pushing past several police barricades before eventually breaking into the Capitol with the group. Footage inside the Capitol showed Konold and others working to stop police officers from being able to lower the security gates in the building, the complaint said.

One of the four others charged alongside Konold in the complaint is William Chrestman, who is described in another court document as the leader of the Kansas City Proud Boys, according to the AP. 

Following Felicia and Cory Konold’s arrests last week, their father, Robert Konold, told the Arizona Daily Star that he didn’t know they were members of a group.

“Neither of them, as far as I knew, had any affiliation with any group or anything,” Konold said.

While he said he and Felicia had become estranged in the past year, he said he remains “tight” with his son, and that he would have known if Cory joined the Proud Boys.

Robert Konold said that it was his daughter who really wanted to go to the Trump event, and that her brother tagged along. 

“He was just going to drive with his sister because she was going to go regardless,” Konold said. “He figured, ‘Hey, road trip, and we can both share driving.'”

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