WASHINGTON — Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys chairman who is serving 22 years in federal prison after he was convicted of seditious conspiracy in relation to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, is asking President-elect Donald Trump for a presidential pardon.
Nayib Hassan, Tarrio’s lawyer, wrote a letter to Trump on the fourth anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack asking for “a full and complete Presidential Pardon” from Trump, who has vowed to pardon some rioters after he takes office on Jan. 20.
In the letter, Hassan called Tarrio, 42, a “young man with an aspiring future ahead of him” who was “portrayed throughout the Government’s case as a right-wing extremist that promoted a neo-fascist militant organization,” when, Hassan claimed, Tarrio is "nothing more than a proud American that believes in true conservative values.”
Tarrio was one of four members of the far-right Proud Boys group found guilty of seditious conspiracy in May 2023. He was given 22 years in prison, the longest Jan. 6 sentence to date, though he was not in Washington for the attack itself. He had been arrested and ordered to stay away from the capital and was convicted of planning and organizing Proud Boys members to assault the Capitol in the lead-up to Jan. 6.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said after their sentencing that Tarrio and his fellow Proud Boys played a "central role" in leading the Jan. 6 mob to breach the Capitol.
At Tarrio's trial, Hassan had blamed Trump for his client's and other Proud Boys' actions, reminding jurors that Trump said his supporters should “fight like hell” or they were not “going to have a country anymore. He also argued that Trump’s telling the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” at a 2020 presidential debate brought so much attention to the group that “vetting became difficult."
Tarrio was arrested in connection with a separate event — the December 2020 burning of a Black Lives Matter banner — just before the Jan. 6 attack. The top intelligence official in the Washington, D.C., Police Department was convicted two weeks ago of leaking information to Tarrio, telling him just before Jan. 6, 2021, that there was a warrant out in Washington for his arrest.
As a result, Tarrio watched Jan. 6 unfold from, Hassan said at trial, a “hotel in Baltimore.”
More than 1,580 defendants have been charged and 1,270 have been convicted in connection with the Jan. 6 attack. Trump has not given specifics about how many or what categories of defendants he plans to pardon. In a interview last month on NBC News' "Meet the Press," he did not rule out pardoning rioters who assaulted law enforcement officers.
Trump's transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tarrio's request for a pardon.
