Two days earlier than a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol, the now-former chief of a neo-fascist gang was arrested in Washington DC shortly after stepping off a airplane from Miami.
Enrique Tarrio was wished by police after he admitted to ripping down and burning a Black Lives Matter flag outdoors a traditionally Black church within the nation’s capital throughout December riots related to a protest supporting then-President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.
On 6 January, 2021, Tarrio watched the revolt unfold from a lodge in Baltimore.
Earlier than his arrest two days earlier, Tarrio wrote to his lieutenant: “No matter occurs … make it a spectacle.”
Tarrio is now amongst 4 members of the self-described “Western chauvinist” gang dealing with a long time in jail after they have been discovered responsible in Could of seditious conspiracy and different costs in reference to the mob’s assault. Tarrio’s verdict marked the primary profitable seditious conspiracy conviction towards a January 6 defendant who was not bodily on the Capitol that day.
Federal prosecutors are actually asking a choose to condemn convicted Proud Boys members to a long time behind bars. Tarrio may withstand 33 years in jail, the longest sentence but in reference to the assault.
In a sentencing memo, prosecutors mentioned the lads “organized and directed a power of practically 200 to assault the center of our democracy” and “deliberately positioned themselves on the vanguard of political violence on this nation.”
“The defendants understood the stakes, they usually embraced their position in bringing a few ‘revolution.’ They unleashed a power on the Capitol that was calculated to exert their political will on elected officers by power and to undo the outcomes of a democratic election,” prosecutors wrote. “They failed. They don’t seem to be heroes; they’re criminals.”
In the course of the trial, prosecutors introduced a whole lot of inside messages revealing the group’s poisonous rhetoric and tradition of violence depicting a gang “that got here collectively to make use of power towards its enemies” within the weeks main as much as January 6, based on prosecutors.
Prosecutors argued that the Proud Boys weren’t merely obedient followers of the previous president’s instructions however have been making ready for “all-out struggle” to undermine thousands and thousands of People’ votes and upend a democratic election to protect his presidency.
Tarrio, because the chief of the gang, alongside along with his 4 co-defendants, “directed, mobilized and led” a crowd of 200 supporters in direction of the Capitol on January 6, “resulting in dismantling of steel barricades, destruction of property, breaching of the Capitol constructing, and assaults on legislation enforcement,” then bragged about their actions on social media and in group chat messages that have been later shared with jurors, based on prosecutors.
Defence attorneys have positioned the blame on the phrases and actions of then-President Trump, who directed his supporters to “battle like hell” the morning of the assault and – in a message from a debate stage heard loud and clear by members of the Proud Boys and their allies – “stand by.”
“It was Donald Trump’s phrases. It was his motivation,” Tarrio’s lawyer Nayib Hassan instructed jurors in closing arguments. “It was not Enrique Tarrio. They need to use Enrique Tarrio as a scapegoat for Donald J Trump and people in energy.”
Proud Boys emerged in cities throughout the US as a violent response to antifascists organizing within the wake of the 2016 election, exploiting white, right-wing male rage and counting on semi-ironic posturing and barroom tradition to launder far-right, anti-immigrant and anti-LGBT+ views.
Tarrio, who assumed the position of group “chairman” in 2018, beforehand was a “prolific” cooperator with native and federal legislation enforcement businesses, based on court docket information and testimony from a former lawyer.
His personal lawyer and an FBI investigator mentioned Tarrio helped authorities prosecute greater than a dozen folks in instances involving medication, playing and human smuggling between 2012 and 2014. Tarrio has denied his involvement.
Enrique “Henry” Tarrio, 39, was born in Miami to Cuban immigrant mother and father.
He was initially reluctant to hitch the Proud Boys till he was courted by members at a celebration for far-right activist Milo Yiannopoulos in 2017; Tarrio was there working safety.
Tarrio rose by the ranks of the burgeoning neo-fascist gang, attending occasions for Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, rallying alongside members at 2017’s so-called Unite the Proper occasion in Charlottesville, Virginia that exploded into deadly violence, and broadening his Florida chapter right into a nationwide operation.
“Earlier than me – they usually hate it once I say this – they have been the Gavin McInnes fan membership,” he instructed the Miami New Occasions. “We weren’t actually political.”
In 2013, he pleaded responsible to costs stemming from a healthcare fraud case involving diabetic take a look at strips, then assisted federal prosecutors to determine a dozen different suspects, based on court docket information. He served one yr and 4 months in jail.
Throughout a televised presidential debate on 29 September, 2020, debate moderator Chris Wallace repeatedly requested then-President Trump whether or not he would denounce white supremacism. Mr Trump requested for a reputation to reference. Joe Biden, standing on the alternative aspect of the stage, recommended the Proud Boys.
“Proud Boys, stand again and stand by,” Mr Trump mentioned. “However I’ll let you know what anyone’s obtained to do one thing about antifa and the left as a result of this isn’t a right-wing downside. It is a left-wing downside.”
Nearly instantly, Proud Boys members and their allies celebrated what they heard as a name to motion.
“Trump mainly mentioned to go f*** them up!” Tarrio’s future co-defendant Joe Biggs wrote on Parler on the time. “This makes me so completely happy.”
Accounts additionally circulated a meme illustrating the president sporting a Fred Perry shirt – part of the group’s unofficial uniform – and a peaked cap bearing the Proud Boys emblem with the textual content “standing by in your orders common, sir.”
One other picture included an incorrect model of the president’s remarks that extra acutely resembled a name to arms: “Proud Boys can stand again and stand by, as a result of somebody has to handle antifa and these folks.”
“Though I’m enthusiastic about our point out on the talk stage … I’m not taking this as a direct endorsement from the President,” Tarrio wrote on Telegram.
“Him telling the Proud Boys to face again and standby is what we’ve ALWAYS carried out,” he added.
On Parler, Tarrio mentioned: “Standing by, sir.”
Following Mr Trump’s defeat within the 2020 election, Tarrio and a whole lot of members of the Proud Boys and different far-right teams marched by Washington DC, the place they set fireplace to a Black Lives Matter banner seized from historic Black church Asbury United Methodist. The group additionally attacked Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, one other historic Black church.
Throughout his arrest after his arrival in Washington on 4 January, 2021, police discovered Tarrio was carrying two high-capacity magazines suitable with high-powered rifles. Each have been empty.
He confronted a misdemeanor cost of destruction of property for burning the church’s signal and two subsequent felony costs for possessing a high-capacity feeding machine.
Tarrio had beforehand admitted in feedback on Parler and on a Proud Boys-affiliated podcast that he was liable for burning a church’s signal.
“Within the burning of the BLM signal, I used to be the one which lit it on fireplace,” he mentioned. “I used to be the person who went forward and put the lighter to it and engulfed it in flames, and I’m rattling proud that I did.”
Later that yr, he introduced he was stepping down from his management position with the Proud Boys, as different members “begin getting extra concerned in native politics, operating our guys for workplace from native seats, whether or not it’s a easy GOP seat or a metropolis council seat.”
However within the wake of January 6, because the group decentralized, members have harassed drag queen story-telling occasions at libraries and amplified “groomer” smears aimed toward LGBT+ folks.
The group has been central to a wave of assaults and threats towards drag performers and the folks and venues that host them, based on a latest report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Proud Boys chapters focused 60 such occasions, with greater than half leading to bodily and verbal clashes, the report discovered.
In July 2021, as a part of a plea settlement dropping the felony costs towards him, Tarrio pleaded responsible to destruction of property and to a misdemeanor depend of tried possession of a high-capacity journal. He was launched in January 2022 after serving 4 months in jail.
Final month, members of the group have been ordered to pay $1m over what a Washington DC Superior Courtroom choose referred to as a “extremely orchestrated” and “hateful and overtly racist” assault towards the church.
5 months later, a federal grand jury indicted Tarrio and 4 different males – Joe Biggs, Ethan Nordean, Dominic Pezzola and Zachary Rehl – for seditious conspiracy in reference to the Capitol assault.
US District Choose Timothy Kelly barred prosecutors from discussing Tarrio’s prior arrest in the course of the Proud Boys trial, however jurors have been uncovered to dozens of messages revealing members’ hateful rhetoric and requires violence in non-public messages and throughout social media platforms and in public statements – and in a video exhibiting them burning the Black Lives Matter banner.
Within the weeks main as much as January 6, Tarrio had assembled a “Ministry of Self-Protection” along with his co-defendants and Jeremy Bertino, a former Proud Boy who pleaded responsible to seditious conspiracy and served as a key authorities witness at trial. Bertino’s testimony implicated Tarrio and the opposite males in a conspiracy to what he mentioned was “something that was crucial to avoid wasting the nation” – together with breaking into the Capitol to dam the certification of an American election.
Days earlier than the assault, Tarrio exchanged messages with one other one who shared a plan referred to as “1776 Returns” that included plans to occupy “essential buildings” with “as many individuals as potential,” together with the Home and Senate. That individual wrote that “revolution is [sic] vital than something,” to which Tarrio replied: “That’s what each waking second consists of … I’m not taking part in video games.”
On January 6, Tarrio instructed followers on social media that day to “do what should be carried out” and, in a bunch chat with different Proud Boys members, “do it once more.”
“Make no mistake,” he wrote in one other message. “We did this.”