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Proud Boys Sedition Case
Ex-Leader Sentenced to 22 Years
How Group Led Capitol Breaches
Inside the Investigation
The Path to Jan. 6
Ex-Leader of Proud Boys Sentenced to
22 Years in Jan. 6 Sedition Case
The prison term for Enrique Tarrio was the most severe penalty
handed down so far to any of the more than 1,100 people charged
in connection with the Capitol attack.
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Enrique Tarrio led the Proud Boys during a period when far-right extremists moved
from the fringes toward the center of conservative politics. Noah Berger/Associated
Press
By Alan Feuer
Sept. 5, 2023
Updated 6:34 p.m. ET
Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, was
sentenced on Tuesday to 22 years in prison for the central role he
played in organizing a gang of his pro-Trump followers to attack
the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and stop the peaceful transfer of
presidential power.
Mr. Tarrio’s sentence, stemming from his conviction this spring on
charges of seditious conspiracy, was the most severe penalty
handed down so far to any of the more than 1,100 people charged in
connection with the Capitol attack — and was likely to remain that
way, given that no other defendants currently face accusations as
serious as the ones he did.
Until now, the longest prison term connected to Jan. 6 had been 18
years. That sentence was issued last week to Ethan Nordean, one
of Mr. Tarrio’s co-defendants. The same sentence was given in a
separate case in May to Stewart Rhodes, the leader of another farright group, the Oath Keepers militia, who also was found guilty of
sedition in connection with the storming of the Capitol.
The penalty imposed on Mr. Tarrio at a three-hour hearing in
Federal District Court in Washington was the final sentence to be
lodged against the five members of the Proud Boys who were tried
on seditious conspiracy charges earlier this year. Three other men
in the case — Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola —
were each sentenced last week to between 10 and 17 years in
prison.
But of all the sentences handed down so far, Mr. Tarrio’s was the
most notable — not only because of its length, but also because of
what it suggested about the current state of the Proud Boys.
Within days of the Capitol attack, the far-right group became a
priority for the F.B.I.’s inquiry into Jan. 6 as investigators quickly
determined that dozens of its members had played decisive roles in
breaching barricades and assaulting the police.
In a series of separate prosecutions — of which Mr. Tarrio’s
sedition trial was by far the most important — the Justice
Department all but decapitated the group’s national leadership and
mostly put an end to its involvement in large-scale and often
violent pro-Trump rallies in cities across the country.
But the Proud Boys as a whole survived, persisting in their role as
“foot soldiers for the right,” in the words of one member who
testified for the government at Mr. Tarrio’s trial. In recent years,
the group has repeatedly inserted itself at the local level into
conflicts over issues like coronavirus restrictions and the teaching
of antiracism in schools, and has taken part in attacks against
L.G.B.T.Q. pride events.
Explaining why he had imposed 22 years, Judge Timothy J. Kelly
read aloud the seditious conspiracy statute, noting that it was a
“serious offense.” Mr. Tarrio, he added, was the “ultimate leader of
that conspiracy” and had been “motivated by revolutionary zeal.”
For Mr. Tarrio, 39, the sentence ended a brief but belligerent career
as a prominent force among far-right groups during a period when
they moved from the fringes toward the center of conservative
politics. Mr. Tarrio was in charge of the Proud Boys, which has long
espoused a kind of violent patriarchal nationalism, when Mr.
Trump famously called it out during a presidential debate against
Joseph R. Biden Jr., telling its members to “stand back and stand
by.”
A Floridian of Cuban descent rarely seen without his uniform of
sunglasses and a baseball cap, Mr. Tarrio took control of the Proud
Boys in 2018 after the group’s founder, Gavin McInnes, stepped
aside. With longstanding ties to pro-Trump figures like Roger J.
Stone Jr., Mr. Tarrio was enough of a celebrity in right-wing circles
that even the prosecutors who secured his conviction referred to
him in a sentencing memo this month as “a naturally charismatic
leader” and “a savvy propagandist.”
As he left the courtroom escorted by federal marshals, Mr. Tarrio
raised two fingers in a peace or victory sign.
Conor Mulroe, a prosecutor on the case, had urged Judge Kelly to
sentence Mr. Tarrio to 33 years in prison, saying that a stiff penalty
was needed to prevent extremists from attacking the democratic
process in future elections. Mr. Mulroe described Mr. Tarrio as
summoning his men to Washington on Jan. 6 and launching them
at the Capitol, where they crashed into the building with a “tidal
wave of force.”
“His leadership over the Proud Boys was about violence and
manipulation,” Mr. Mulroe went on. “He demonized his perceived
adversaries. He glorified the use of force against them. He elevated
the street fighting element in his group — the so-called rally boys
— and he practiced and endorsed the use of disinformation,
deceiving the public and cultivating fear.”
During the trial, prosecutors portrayed the Proud Boys as having
served as “Donald Trump’s army” on Jan. 6. Racked with despair
over Mr. Trump’s defeat to Mr. Biden, the prosecutors said, the
group was “thirsting for violence and organizing for action” and
ultimately fought at the Capitol “to keep their preferred leader in
power no matter what the law or the courts had to say about it.”
Still, Mr. Tarrio’s situation was unique: He was in Baltimore, not
Washington, on Jan. 6, having been kicked out of the city days
earlier by a local judge presiding over a separate criminal matter.
In that case, Mr. Tarrio was arrested on charges of burning a Black
Lives Matter banner that belonged to a Black church in
Washington after an earlier pro-Trump rally and of being in
possession of two high-capacity rifle magazines bearing a Proud
Boys logo.
Prosecutors claimed that Mr. Tarrio knew in advance that he was
going to be taken into custody through a contact in the Washington
police force and “strategically calculated his arrest as a means to
inspire a reaction by his followers.” On Jan. 6, Mr. Tarrio was
watching events unfold from a distance and swapping texts with
some of his subordinates as the pro-Trump mob — with the Proud
Boys in the lead — overran the Capitol.
Mr. Mulroe said that Mr. Tarrio has never showed true remorse for
the Capitol attack, noting that even as a jury was deliberating his
fate he gave an interview in front of thousands of people online
declaring that the Proud Boys did nothing wrong on that day.
Mr. Tarrio’s lawyers disputed many of these claims, arguing, as
they did during the trial, that neither Mr. Tarrio nor the Proud Boys
had a plan to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“The plan all along was to confront antifa and to protest,” Sabino
Jauregui, one of the lawyers, said, adding, “Everything that
happened after that was not my client’s intent and was not my
client’s plan.”
Nayib Hassan, another lawyer for Mr. Tarrio, took issue with the
government’s attempts to liken his client to “a general controlling
his soldiers,” noting that in this instance, the general “didn’t have
communication with his troops.”
Moments after his mother begged Judge Kelly for leniency, Mr.
Tarrio, dressed in an orange prison outfit, apologized for his role in
the events of Jan. 6 and said his trial, which lasted more than three
months, had “humbled” him.
In what seemed like the testimony he never gave at the trial, he
told Judge Kelly that after the election he could simply not believe
that Mr. Trump had lost and that every media outlet he turned to
told him that his anger was justified. After two pro-Trump rallies in
Washington before Jan. 6, he went on, he saw “the temperature
rising” among his followers and claimed that he reached out to
officials in the F.B.I., the Secret Service and the local Washington
police.
As for Jan. 6 itself, it was a “national embarrassment,” Mr. Tarrio
said, adding, “I am not a political zealot.”
Some of the other Proud Boys sentenced so far were similarly
contrite in their remarks to Judge Kelly — only to reverse
themselves outside the judge’s presence. Last week, not long after
telling the judge that he was “a changed and humbled man,” Mr.
Pezzola raised his fist as he was being led from the courtroom and
shouted with a smile, “Trump won!”
Days after weeping at his own sentencing, Mr. Biggs called into a
vigil being held outside the municipal jail in Washington that
houses several Jan. 6 defendants, describing his punishment as
“insane” and declaring, “We gotta stand up and fight — don’t give
up.”
In an interview with his former boss, the conspiracy theorist Alex
Jones, Mr. Biggs also said he expected that Mr. Trump, if reelected, would pardon him.
Like the proceedings last week for Mr. Tarrio’s co-defendants, the
hearing on Tuesday dwelled on complex questions surrounding
what is known as a terrorism sentencing enhancement. The
adjustment can be used to increase defendants’ sentences if
prosecutors can show that their actions were meant to influence
“the conduct of government by intimidation and coercion.”
Judge Kelly has said that the enhancement technically applies to
each of the five men’s cases though he has acknowledged that none
of them engaged in typical acts of terrorism like blowing up
buildings or attacking military installations.
Mr. Jauregui took offense to Judge Kelly’s using the adjustment
against Mr. Tarrio.
“My client is no terrorist,” he said. “My client is a misguided
patriot.”
But Mr. Mulroe argued that even if Mr. Tarrio’s followers in the
Proud Boys would “never dream of strapping a bomb to their
chests,” they were “thrilled at the notion of traveling from city to
city and beating their adversaries unconscious in a street fight.”
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence. He joined The Times in 1999. More
about Alan Feuer
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