Tag: proud boys

Washington — The one-time chairman of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, was sentenced to 22 years in prison on Tuesday, the longest prison sentence imposed in the Justice Department’s sprawling investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol breach. 

Prosecutors had recommended a sentence of 33 years in prison.

Henry “Enrique” Tarrio has been in jail since his 2022 arrest and was convicted earlier this year by a Washington, D.C. jury on multiple charges including seditious conspiracy. Like his co-defendants in the case, the jurors did not convict Tarrio on every count he faced at the time. 

His co-defendant Ethan Nordean was sentenced last week to 18 years, while others received terms of between 10 and 17 years. Tarrio’s sentencing was supposed to be earlier but was delayed due to U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly’s illness. 

Tarrio wasn’t present at the Capitol on Jan. 6, but prosecutors in their sentencing papers described him as the “primary organizer” of the conspiracy for which he and his co-defendants were convicted. He used his outsized influence “to condone and promote violence” in others, prosecutors wrote, adding, “He was a general rather than a soldier.” 

After the 2020 presidential election, according to evidence presented at trial, Tarrio began posting on social media and in message groups about a “civil war,” later threatening, “No Trump…No peace. No Quarter.” And as Jan. 6 approached, he posted about “revolt.” 

His co-defendants — Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola — gathered with other Proud Boys members on the day of the riot and marched toward the Capitol, interfering with police and ultimately forcing entry into the building where Congress was attempting to certify President Biden’s victory. Pezzola was the only co-defendant to not be convicted of the most severe charge of seditious conspiracy at trial, but he was found guilty of using a stolen police riot shield to break a Capitol window.

“Make no mistake, we did this,” Tarrio wrote on social media during the riot, according to trial evidence.

“Enrique Tarrio was the leader of this conspiracy. He was on a tier of his own,” prosecutor Conor Mulroe said in court Tuesday. “The defendant and his co-conspirators targeted our entire system of government.” 

The Proud Boys defendants and the group they led to the Capitol that day, Mulroe said, were a “tidal wave of force” at the start of the attack and played a “pivotal” role in the violence on Jan. 6. 

“They came so close to succeeding,” the prosecutor warned. “There was a very real possibility that we were going to wake up on Jan. 7 in a full-blown constitutional crisis with the federal government in complete chaos.” 

Tarrio himself spoke and asked for leniency during Tuesday’s hearing. He said that he was sorry for the events of Jan. 6 and apologized to law enforcement and Washington, D.C., residents. 

“The citizens of D.C. deserve better,” Tarrio said. “What happened on Jan. 6 was a national embarrassment.” 

He told the judge he had been angry because his candidate — Donald Trump — lost the 2020 election, and he continued to hear claims of a stolen election

“To the men and women of law enforcement who answered the call that day, I am sorry,” Tarrio said.

“I am not a political zealot. Inflicting harm or changing the results of the election was not my goal,” he explained, “Please show me mercy.” 

Tarrio’s fiancée, sister, and mother all asked the judge for leniency, urging the court to see past Tarrio’s actions and rhetoric.

Throughout the monthslong trial, defense attorneys worked to separate the defendants’ rhetoric from the events of Jan. 6 and, in some cases, tried to at least in part blame then-President Donald Trump for the violence that unfolded. 

“Did he say some things that he shouldn’t have? Did he celebrate? … Sure,” Tarrio’s defense attorney Sabino Jauregui said in court on Tuesday, reiterating much of the Proud Boys’ case at trial. “But he did not have any direct influence, any direct orders.” 

The defense attorney said Tarrio had “no way to know” what would happen at the Capitol on Jan. 6. The judge, however, appeared unconvinced and told Tarrio’s team that the jury had already convicted him of the conspiracy that tied him to the events at the Capitol. 

“An entire branch of government was brought to heel,” the judge said Tuesday. “That was all brought about in part by the actions of the defendant and his co-conspirators.” 

Based on evidence presented during the hearing, Judge Kelly concluded that Tarrio  began planning for the Jan. 6 attack as early as Dec. 19, 2020, and instituted a rigid command structure for preparation and recruitment. 

Tuesday’s sentencing hearing was the last of Kelly’s five proceedings in the last week related to the Proud Boys case, during which time he imposed sentences that varied, including one that was half what the government had requested,  a decade in prison for Dominic Pezzola. 

Judge Kelly said in sentencing Tarrio that the evidence showed that “Mr. Tarrio was the ultimate leader, the ultimate person who organized, who was motivated by revolutionary zeal.” 

“His not being present did serve some strategic purposes,” the judge said, “It did allow his lieutenants to rile up the crowd that day, and it did, from his perspective, insulate him…and distance himself from what in fact unfolded that day, and that is useful to someone as smart as Mr. Tarrio.” 

“I don’t have any indication that he is remorseful for the actual things that he was convicted of,” Judge Kelly said.

Prosecutors successfully petitioned the judge to apply a terrorism-related enhancement to the sentences, alleging the defendants retaliated against their government. Ultimately, however, Kelly did not allow such considerations to heavily affect the length of the sentences he imposed. 

“My client is no terrorist. My client is a misguided patriot,” Jauregui claimed in court Tuesday, unsuccessfully arguing that the judge should reject the terrorism-related enhancement. 

Citing Tarrio’s Cuban American heritage, another defense attorney, Nayib Hassan, told Kelly,  “We talk s**t and that is exactly what [Tarrio] was doing” in his rhetoric after the attack. 

“He should keep George Washington out of it,” the judge shot back, denouncing Tarrio’s past comparisons of his co-defendants’ actions during the Capitol attack to the founders. On Tuesday, Tarrio referred to those allusions he had made as “a perversion.” 

“It is kind of hard to put into words how important that peaceful transfer of power is. Our country was founded as an experiment in self-government by the people but it cannot long endure if the way we elect our leaders is threatened with force and violence,” Judge Kelly said Tuesday. “What happened that day didn’t honor our founders. It was the kind of thing they wrote the Constitution to prevent.” 

Washington — Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio’s sentencing hearing, which had been scheduled for Wednesday, has been delayed due to the judge being out sick, a U.S. Marshals Service spokesperson said. The court says his sentencing has been rescheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 5. Tarrio is to be sentenced for numerous felony counts tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol assault including seditious conspiracy.

Tarrio and three subordinates — Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean and Zachary Rehl — were found guilty in May of seditious conspiracy, the most serious charge brought in the Justice Department’s sprawling probe of the breach. A jury in Washington, D.C., found another co-defendant, Dominic Pezzola, not guilty of that most severe charge, but convicted him on other counts. Nordean, who was also supposed to be sentenced Wednesday, will be sentenced Friday.

Prosecutors have asked federal Judge Timothy Kelly to send Tarrio and Biggs to prison for 33 years — the longest sentencing request so far — and alleged they “and the men they recruited and led participated in every consequential breach at the Capitol on January 6.” 

In court filings earlier this month, the Justice Department alleged Tarrio and his co-defendants worked to bring about a “revolution” and argued they should be punished accordingly. 

“The defendants personally deployed force against the government on January 6,” prosecutors wrote, urging Kelly to apply an enhanced sentence, based on allegations that the Proud Boys engaged in conduct related to terrorism — that is, they were found guilty of retaliating against their government. 

Although Tarrio wasn’t at the Capitol on Jan. 6, prosecutors in their sentencing papers called him the “primary organizer” of the conspiracy and said he used his outsized influence “to condone and promote violence” in others. “He was a general rather than a soldier.” 

But Tarrio’s attorneys pushed back in a sentencing filing of their own, calling the Justice Department’s terrorism recommendation “arbitrary” and unnecessary. 

“Participating in a plan for the Proud Boys to protest on January 6 is not the same as directing others on the ground to storm the Capitol by any means necessary. In fact, Tarrio was not in contact with anyone during the event he is alleged to have led or organized,” the defense attorneys argued. 

During a months-long hearing earlier this year, prosecutors presented evidence that soon after the election, Tarrio began posting on social media and in message groups about a “civil war,” later threatening, “No Trump…No peace. No Quarter.” 

“Let’s bring this new year in with one word in mind: revolt,” he wrote on Jan. 6, 2021, according to the government’s evidence. 

Nordean, Rehl, Biggs and Pezzola gathered with over 100 Proud Boys near the Washington Monument on Jan. 6, 2021, around the time that President Donald Trump was speaking at the White House Ellipse, and the government contends they then marched to the Capitol, where they were accused of participating in and encouraging the violence. 

“Make no mistake, we did this,” Tarrio wrote on social media during the riot. 

“Did Enrique Tarrio make comments that were egregious? Absolutely,” Tarrio’s defense attorney asked the jury in closing arguments. “You may not like what he said, but it is First Amendment-protected speech.” 

But the jurors were unconvinced and convicted Tarrio of seditious conspiracy and other crimes. 

Tarrio and his co-defendants are not the first Jan. 6 defendants to be sentenced for seditious conspiracy.  Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right group known as the Oath Keepers, was sentenced to 18 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of the crime. The sentence was lower than the 25 years recommended by prosecutors. 

The Justice Department has said it plans to appeal that sentence, and many Oath Keepers defendants, including Rhodes, are appealing their convictions.