Enrique Tarrio

Henry "Enrique" Tarrio (born 1983 or 1984) is an American convicted seditionist and far-right activist. From 2018 to 2021, he was the chairman of the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist organization that promotes and engages in political violence in the United States. Along with three other Proud Boys leaders, Tarrio was convicted in May 2023 of seditious conspiracy for his role in the 2021 United States Capitol attack. In September 2023, Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison, before being pardoned by U.S. president Donald Trump following his return to office on January 20, 2025.

Tarrio, who is Afro-Cuban, was the Florida state director of the grassroots organization Latinos for Trump. In 2020, Tarrio was a candidate in the Republican primary election for Florida's 27th congressional district, but withdrew. According to a former federal prosecutor and the transcripts of a 2014 federal court proceeding, Tarrio had served as an informant to both federal and local law enforcement from 2012 to 2014.

Life before Proud Boys

Henry Tarrio was born in Miami, Florida, in 1983 or 1984, and was raised Catholic in the neighborhood of Little Havana.

In 2004, when he was 20 years old, Tarrio was convicted of theft. He was sentenced to community service and three years of probation and was ordered to pay restitution. After 2004, Tarrio relocated to a small town in North Florida to run a poultry farm. He later returned to Miami. He has also founded a security equipment installation firm and another firm providing GPS tracking for companies.

In 2012, Tarrio was indicted for his role in a scheme to rebrand and resell stolen diabetic test strips. After being charged, Tarrio cooperated with investigators, helping them prosecute more than a dozen others. In 2013, Tarrio was sentenced to 30 months (of which he served 16) in federal prison.

Between 2012 and 2014, Tarrio was an informant to both federal and local law enforcement; in a 2014 federal court hearing, Tarrio's lawyer said that Tarrio had been a "prolific" cooperator who had assisted the government in the investigation and prosecution of more than twelve people in cases involving anabolic steroids, gambling, and human smuggling; had helped identify three "grow houses" where marijuana was cultivated; and had repeatedly worked undercover to aid in investigations. Tarrio denied working undercover or cooperating with prosecutions, but the court transcript contradicted the denial, and the former federal prosecutor in the proceeding against Tarrio confirmed that he cooperated. Tarrio's role as an informant was first made public in January 2021, after Reuters obtained the court records and interviewed investigators and lawyers involved in the case.

Proud Boys

Tarrio volunteered at a Miami event for far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos in May 2017 when he encountered a member of the Proud Boys, who encouraged him to join the organization. In August 2017, Tarrio attended the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. He said he was there to protest the removal of Confederate monuments and memorials.

In 2018, Tarrio became a fourth-degree member of the Proud Boys, a distinction reserved for those who get into a physical altercation "for the cause"; he punched a person who was believed to be aligned with antifa. He assumed the role of chairman for the organization on November 29, 2018, succeeding Jason Lee Van Dyke, who held the position for two days, and Van Dyke's predecessor Gavin McInnes. McInnes involved Tarrio as a prospective electoral candidate, and in that capacity both conferred with Trump right-wing confidants Steve Bannon (whom Trump later pardoned) and Sebastian Gorka.

Tarrio helped organize the End Domestic Terrorism rally held in Portland, Oregon, on August 17, 2019. The event, co-organized by Joe Biggs, was advertised as a response to the June 2019 beating up of conservative blogger Andy Ngo.

In addition to his role with the Proud Boys, Tarrio owns a Miami T-shirt business, known as the 1776 Shop, an online vendor for right-wing merchandise. Slate described the 1776 Shop as a "freewheeling online emporium for far-right merch" that sells a range of Proud Boys gear including shirts stating "Pinochet did nothing wrong".

In regard to his views on extremist groups and ideologies, Tarrio has been quoted as saying, "I denounce white supremacy. I denounce anti-Semitism. I denounce racism. I denounce fascism. I denounce communism and any other -ism that is prejudiced towards people because of their race, religion, culture, tone of skin." In regard to his own ethnicity, he has said, "I'm pretty brown, I'm Cuban. There's nothing white supremacist about me." The Anti-Defamation League considers the Proud Boys to be misogynistic, Islamophobic, transphobic and anti-immigration, and goes on to state that some members support white supremacist and antisemitic ideologies, and engage with white supremacist groups.

After Tarrio confronted and shouted expletives at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Coral Gables in late 2018, the chairman of the Miami-Dade Republican Party apologized and US Senator Marco Rubio compared the disruptors to the "repudiation mobs Castro has long ago used in Cuba."

In 2018, Twitter removed Tarrio's account, along with others related to the Proud Boys, citing how platform policy prohibited accounts related to violent extremist groups. The following year, Twitter detected and removed another account that Tarrio created to evade the suspension.

Tarrio said he is a close friend of Roger Stone, a Trump ally who is a high-profile Proud Boys supporter. After Stone was arrested in January 2019, Tarrio appeared outside the courtroom in a shirt emblazoned with the message "Roger Stone did nothing wrong". The two appeared in a video together made on December 11, 2020, the day before a "Stop the Steal" rally where Tarrio stood on stage with Stone. On December 23, 2020, Trump pardoned Stone, whose prison sentence he had previously commuted.

Tarrio began a run for Congress for Florida's 27th district in 2020, but withdrew before the Republican Party primary. In his campaign's responses to a Ballotpedia survey done in 2019, Tarrio listed criminal justice reform, protection of the Second Amendment, countering domestic terrorism, ending the war on drugs, free speech on digital platforms, and immigration reform among his priorities.

December 2020 clashes and 2021 guilty plea

On December 12, 2020, after Donald Trump was defeated in the November 2020 election, Tarrio and the Proud Boys, along with other far-right groups, marched in Washington, D.C. to support Trump's campaign to delegitimize his election loss. About 200 Proud Boys, many clad in combat fatigues, ballistic vests, and helmets, took part. Tarrio and the group set fire to a "Black Lives Matter" banner they seized from Asbury United Methodist Church, a historic Black church. Asbury United Methodist, along with three other churches, were vandalized that night, and more than three dozen people were arrested. Tarrio was among a group of Proud Boys and far-right activists who also attacked the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, DC that day.

Trump supporters and opponents clashed in the streets, culminating in the stabbing of four people. After a warrant was issued for his arrest, Tarrio was arrested by D.C. police on January 4, two days before the January 6 insurrection. The FBI later said they had arrested Tarrio in an attempt to prevent the 2021 United States Capitol attack.

Tarrio was charged with misdemeanor destruction of property and with two counts of felony possession of illegal high-capacity ammunition magazines (which police discovered upon arresting Tarrio on January 4). He was released on bail on January 5, 2021, with conditions; Tarrio was banned from entering Washington except for trial or meeting with his lawyers.

In July 2021, as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors, Tarrio pleaded guilty to destruction of property and to a misdemeanor count of attempted possession of a high-capacity magazine (the felony counts were dropped as part of the agreement). Tarrio acknowledged that he had burned the banner, but denied that the act was a hate crime. At the sentencing hearing in August 2021, Tarrio said he made a "grave mistake" and wanted to "profusely apologize for my actions." The D.C. Superior Court judge found that Tarrio's claim that he did not fully realize what he was doing was "not credible" and that video evidence contradicted some of Tarrio's claims. Tarrio was sentenced to 155 days in the D.C. Jail, more than the 90 days requested by federal prosecutors. Tarrio began serving his sentence on September 6, 2021. His November 2021 request for early release based on poor living conditions in the D.C. Jail was denied. Tarrio was released from the D.C. jail in January 2022, after serving four months and a week.

The Metropolitan AME Church, one of the historically Black congregations attacked in December 2020, sued Tarrio and the Texas-based Proud Boys International LLC. Represented by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the law firm Paul Weiss, the church brought claims of civil conspiracy, defacement of private property, trespass, and destruction of religious property under the D.C. Bias and Related Crimes Act. The Proud Boys failed to respond to the suit, and the plaintiffs won a default judgment in April 2021.