1776 Returns
A disputed January 6 document, explained from the file outward.
1776 Returns (also known as Storm the Winter Palace and filed as 1776 Thesis.docx) is a nine-page document describing a plan to occupy select government buildings in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021. It was central to the government's conspiracy case against Enrique Tarrio and four other Proud Boys leaders.
The document was sent via Telegram from Eryka Gemma Flores to Enrique Tarrio on December 30, 2020 at 12:53 PM. Flores had told Tarrio days earlier that “the revolution is so romantic” and “the storming of the winter palace is how the Russian revolution occurred.” The night after sending the document, she texted him: “if you don't like my plan, let me know. I will pitch elsewhere.”
This case file does not assume the document is genuine or fabricated. It assembles the public forensic record, Samuel Armes' testimony, and Flores' known message history in one place so readers can assess the provenance chain themselves.
Why the provenance matters
The document exists today only as a rasterized PDF created February 8, 2022—thirteen months after the alleged transfer. The original native DOCX is lost. The PDF has stripped metadata, a manipulated modification timestamp, and page images from at least two different production methods. A serious provenance question follows: who wrote what, when, and from what source material?
Samuel Armes told the House Select Committee he created a 3–5 page precursor document with Google Maps screenshots between August and September 2020 and shared it with Flores. Flores then assembled the final nine-page DOCX in a 125-minute editing session on the night of December 29–30, 2020, incorporating content from multiple sources.
The RSID editing record shows 24 distinct writing sessions layered onto the document, with a building-target list as the foundational layer, operational text added second, distraction tactics third, slogans fourth, demands fifth, and formatting last. The document title “1776 Returns” was one of the final insertions—a late branding choice, not an author’s working title.