Left: President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024, in Palm Beach, Florida (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, file). Right: Enrique Tarrio and the Proud Boys demonstrate near Freedom Plaza during the Million Maga March protest regarding election results on November 14, 2020 in Washington D.C. (Chris Tuite/imageSPACE/MediaPunch /IPX). Inset: Zuny Tarrio (WTVJ).
The mother of the Proud Boys leader who helped orchestrate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol went on television to ask President-elect Donald Trump to pardon her son from his 22-year sentence.
Enrique Tarrio was not in Washington D.C. that day but prosecutors argued he was one of the chief architects of the riot as he was the head of the Proud Boys who led the assault on the Capitol. A jury agreed, convicting him of seditious conspiracy, and a judge handed out the longest sentence of any of the Jan. 6 defendants. Now with Trump set to take office next year, many of the imprisoned rioters are hoping he issues them pardons as he said he would while on the campaign trail.
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In an interview with South Florida NBC affiliate WTVJ, Tarrio’s mother Zuny Tarrio spoke directly to Trump.
“President Trump, I think my son and most of those J6, if not all, deserve to be home with their families,” she said. “We’ve suffered long enough.”
She said while the riot was unfortunate, the “government” should have prevented it before it happened.
“I don’t think anyone honestly likes what happened January 6th,” Zuny Tarrio said. “I think the way that it happened, shouldn’t have happened. I think the government could have stopped that in a lot of ways.”
At least five police officers who engaged with the violent mob died after Jan. 6. Dozens more were injured. Zuny Tarrio said when officers took an oath “there’s no guarantees of what happens when you do a job like that.” She also said the idea that her son was a leader of the riot is “far-fetched” because people who weren’t Proud Boys also committed violence.
“Enrique Tarrio wasn’t even there that day. He was not on the [Capitol] grounds,” she said. “He was not in Washington D.C. that day.”
She described the last few years with her son in prison as “horrific.”
“It’s a terrible feeling to have a child in federal prison without a real reason,” she said.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Tarrio and his four co-defendants faced a raft of other charges in addition to seditious conspiracy, widely considered to be the most serious charge to date against rioters who stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6. The mob, spurred on by then-President Donald Trump’s repeated false statements that fraud affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, overwhelmed police trying to beat back the crowd and violently breached the building as Congress had begun to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral win. Lawmakers were forced to evacuate or shelter in place for several harrowing hours.
The trial of the top leadership of the self-described “Western Chauvinist” group was a rocky road from the start, with nearly three weeks of contentious jury selection. Opening arguments from prosecutors reminded jurors of Trump’s “stand back and stand by” edict to the Proud Boys — issued during a September 2020 presidential debate — and said that the extremist group was prepared to engage in violence in order disrupt the peaceful transition of presidential power and keep Trump in office.
“These men did not stand back,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason McCullough said in opening statements. “They did not stand by. Instead, they mobilized.”
Prosecutors had alleged that Tarrio created the group’s so-called “Ministry of Self Defense” (MOSD) chapter in order to plan for violence on Jan. 6 and used encrypted messaging to organize and coordinate the Proud Boys’ role in the attack. While Tarrio himself was not in Washington that day — having recently been ordered to leave the city after being arrested for burning a stolen Black Lives Matter flag in front of a historically Black D.C. church — he encouraged his followers to stay the course at the Capitol.
Similarly, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack found that the Proud Boys “did lead the assault” on the Capitol building that day.
The defense teams, meanwhile, argued that there wasn’t enough evidence to show that the defendants had all mutually agreed to carry out the attack.
Attorneys for the defendants also argued that Trump — who earlier that day told his supporters at the so-called “Stop the Steal rally” to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell” — was the real culprit.
Marisa Sarnoff contributed to this report
