Proud Boys leader indicted for conspiracy related to Jan. 6 attack
Enrique Tarrio will face a detention hearing on Friday in South Florida.
Enrique Tarrio, the national leader of the Proud Boys, has been indicted on conspiracy charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
A grand jury indictment, docketed Tuesday, charges Tarrio with conspiracy to obstruct Congress. Prosecutors have already leveled conspiracy charges against four Proud Boys leaders — Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Charles Donohoe and Zachary Rehl — who the Justice Department says played a central role in fomenting the breach of the Capitol. IN addition to Tarrio, prosecutors added another Proud Boy to the conspiracy indictment: Dominic Pezzola, who breached the Capitol when he shattered a Senate-wing window with a riot shield.
Tarrio was not present at the Capitol on Jan. 6. He was arrested days earlier for burning a stolen Black Lives Matter flag at a December 2020 rally in Washington, D.C., and was also hit with a pair of charges for possession of high-capacity ammunition magazines.
A D.C. judge released Tarrio a day before the riot and ordered him to stay away from Washington. He pleaded guilty last year and was sentenced to five months in jail. He was released from prison for those offenses in January.
Tarrio, 38, was arrested in Miami on Tuesday on the new indictment and is expected to appear in federal court there later in the day, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, which is overseeing the prosecutions stemming from the Capitol riot. He appeared briefly in South Florida’s federal district court Tuesday, where prosecutors indicated they intended to seek his pretrial detention. A hearing on that effort will take place Friday.
At the hearing, Tarrio — clad in a dark T-shirt with an unidentifiable symbol — said he recently got a job printing and selling shirts that earns him $400 to $500 a week.
Tarrio is the second significant leader of a right-wing group charged with orchestrating key aspects of the attack. Prosecutors in January charged Stewart Rhodes, the national leader of the Oath Keepers, with seditious conspiracy for his group’s role in storming the building and threatening the transfer of power.
In the indictment, prosecutors say that Tarrio did not immediately leave Washington D.C. after his arrest on the flag and gun charges, despite a court order. Instead, he secretly met with Rhodes in “an underground parking garage.” Prosecutors had previously eyed a partnership between the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys in the run-up to Jan. 6.
The indictment comes several weeks after prosecutors secured a guilty plea from Matthew Greene, who was previously charged alongside Pezzola for joining the Capitol attack. Greene’s plea deal requires cooperation with the government.
The Tarrio indictment refers to several unnamed people who appear to be providing information to the government in connection with the Proud Boys case. For example, the indictment references “an individual who is known to the grand jury” who briefly huddled with Biggs seconds before charging at police barricades. Videos of that moment, at 12:53 p.m. on Jan. 6, show Ryan Samsel — a defendant facing felony assault charges — with his arm around Biggs moments before charging the bike rack perimeter and injuring Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards.
Prosecutors have indicated in court filings that Tarrio was in frequent contact before Jan. 6 with other Proud Boys leaders. And they’ve routinely referred to his pre-Jan. 6 exhortation that members of the Proud Boys decline to wear their typical yellow and blue attire to prevent easy identification.
Tarrio testified to the Jan. 6 select committee last month but primarily asserted his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.