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Ex-Proud Boy chair Tarrio arrested on assault charge in DC after news conference

Jay Weaver, Miami Herald on

Published in News & Features

MIAMI — Miami native Enrique Tarrio is in trouble again.

Tarrio, the former chairman of the Proud Boys whose 22-year prison sentence was erased by President Donald Trump a month ago, was arrested by U.S. Capitol Police on Friday.

A woman accused him of assaulting her after the group’s news conference on plans to sue the federal government over the prosecutions of Proud Boys members who were convicted following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Thousands of right-wing extremists stormed the Capitol to stop Congress’ certification of the presidential election won by Joe Biden over Donald Trump.

A police spokesperson confirmed that Tarrio, 40, was arrested for simple assault after a “counter protester” put a cellphone close to his face while he was leaving the news conference on the U.S. Capitol grounds.

“Then the officers witnessed the man strike the woman’s phone and arm,” according to the spokesperson. “The woman told our officers that she wanted to be a complainant, and the man was arrested for the simple assault.”

Police identified the man as Tarrio.

Shortly before his arrest, Tarrio gathered with other Proud Boys members and Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers — both right-wing groups that have supported Trump — to announce their intent to file lawsuits over their prosecutions stemming from the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

“I’m not talking about violent retribution,” Tarrio said, flanked by the Proud Boys and supporters of Jan. 6 defendants, according to The Hill and other news media. “I’m talking about something much more powerful: accountability and the rule of law.”

 

Tarrio said that he and four other Proud Boys tried alongside him for sedition would sue the Justice Department for “about $150 million” within the next few weeks over “their murders, their lies and the endless suffering they have put us through.”

Tarrio and Rhodes were convicted of seditious conspiracy, a rare Civil War-era charge, for plotting to forcibly halt the peaceful transfer of power from Trump to Biden.

At his trial, Tarrio’s defense team said he never saw himself as the field general of the Proud Boys as his colleagues stormed the U.S. Capitol with thousands of others on Jan. 6 — mainly because he watched the violence unfold on TV at a hotel room in Baltimore.

Nonetheless, he was sentenced to 22 years in prison in September 2023 after a federal jury in Washington found him and other Proud Boys guilty of seditious conspiracy and related charges.

At the time, Tarrio’s sentence was the longest related to the Jan. 6 attack. But whatever jurors may have thought about Tarrio’s guilt after his months-long trial, it doesn’t matter anymore.

Tarrio returned to Miami a free man in late January after Trump pardoned him and about 1,300 individuals convicted of crimes in the attack on the Capitol. Trump also commuted the sentences of 14 others convicted in the Jan. 6 attacks.


©2025 Miami Herald. Visit miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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