WASHINGTON — Enrique Tarrio, the former president of the far-right Proud Boys, will face sentencing Tuesday afternoon following his conviction on inflammatory conspiracy charges related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Tarrio was one of four Proud Boys found guilty of seditious conspiracy in May. Federal prosecutors are seeking a 33-year prison sentence, though U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly has sentenced Tarrio’s co-defendants to much lesser sentences than those of the prosectors.
Last week Joe Biggs was sentenced to 17 years; Zachary Rehl up to age 15; and Ethan Nordean to 18, along with Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes for the longest sentence to date on a January 6 defendant. Proud boy Dominic Pezzola, the fifth defendant in the seditious conspiracy trial, was found not guilty on the main charge of seditious conspiracy, but found guilty on other charges; he was sentenced to 10 years.
Federal prosecutors called Tarrio a “naturally charismatic leader, a shrewd propagandist, and the famous president of the national Proud Boys organization.” Tarrio, they said, “influenced numerous subordinate members” whom he used “to organize and carry out the conspiracy to stop the peaceful democratic transfer of power by force.”
Tarrio was not present at the Capitol on January 6, 2021; he was arrested about 48 hours before the attack for his actions at an earlier pro-Donald Trump event in Washington, DC. Tarrio knew he had a warrant out for his arrest thanks to a Washington, D.C. police lieutenant who has since been charged and pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors said the evidence suggests Tarrio “strategistically calculated his arrest as a means of eliciting a response from his followers.”
That Tarrio spent most of January 6 in a Baltimore hotel, prosecutors said, “does not detract from the seriousness of his conduct,” because he was “rather a general than a soldier.”
Tarrio, prosecutors said, is “intelligent, charming, creative and eloquent—a gifted communicator who excels at attracting followers” who “used those talents to incite and radicalize untold numbers of followers, to deter political violence in general.” promote and generally orchestrate the accused conspiracies. special.”
They called for an improvement in the punishment for terrorism in his case and said his actions were clearly intended to influence the government.
“For Tarrio, January 6 was an act of revolution,” the prosecutors wrote.
Tarrio’s defense team argued for a downward deviation from sentencing guidelines and filed letters of support with the court, including one from Tarrio’s cousin, who has worked for the Miami Police Department for 16 years.
About 1,100 people have been charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol on January 6, and more than 300 people have been sentenced to prison. There are still new arrests every week, including the recent arrestS of the first person seen on video breaching the Lower West Tunnel at the Capitol, and another defendant the FBI says stormed the Capitol and filmed a TikTok boasting that rioters had “taken the White House” .
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
