It turns out that committing violent acts in support of Donald Trump is a good career move. At the very least, it gets you dinner with the president.
Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, sentenced to 22 years in prison after being convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots, was freed after Trump issued pardons and commutations to everyone convicted of any offense related to the insurrection.
“Two weeks ago, I was in prison, and just last night, I was in Mar-a-Lago at the president’s house,” told Newsmax host Greg Kelly.
Tarrio said Wednesday that he has taken some time to ponder his future and believes he knows where it lies: Politics, an ironic choice for someone who plotted to overthrow the government.
“I think I’m gonna take a serious look at running for office at some point in 2026 or 2028, and I believe that there is a path for that because it is my passion,” Tarrio said. “I think that I’m going to go ahead and push, and again, there’s a lot of things that need to be aligned for that to happen, so I am gonna take my time with picking what office specifically, what district.”
“Is it gonna be local? Is it gonna be at a federal level?” he said. “I don’t know, but I will tell you that I have made a decision.”
He didn’t say whether Trump played any role in that decision.
But the relationship between the president and the Proud Boys is a close one. Founded in 2016 by Gavin McInnes, a co-founder of VICE News, the Proud Boys identify themselves as a “Western Chauvinist” men’s drinking club. With chapters in dozens of states, members of the far-right organization undergo hazing rituals, which range from Proud Boys tattoos to initiating fights with anti-fascists, according to USA Today.
While McInnes claimed the Proud Boys were not conceived as a political organization, a 2021 USA Today investigation of the group’s Wisconsin chapter revealed it to be “a den of racism and antisemitism, where moving up within the group was dependent on sadistically bullying potential members and promoting white supremacist talking points.”
Any pretense of neutrality was destroyed once Trump first announced his run for the presidency. Throughout the real estate mogul’s first term, the Proud Boys emerged as the president’s first line of defense, sometimes employing violence to take on his political enemies in the streets. In 2018, the FBI categorized the Proud Boys as an extremist group with ties to white nationalism.
Two years later, after claiming to be unfamiliar with the group, Trump, during a televised debate with Democratic nominee Joe Biden, told its members to “stand back and stand by.” The statement took on greater resonance after the group promoted the outgoing president’s unfounded conspiracy theories claiming the election had been stolen.
Tarrio was charged with nine counts as part of an organized plot to prevent the certification of Biden’s election. Though he wasn’t in Washington, D.C., on the day of the insurrection, prosecutors presented evidence that he created a “Ministry of Self Defense” within the Proud Boys, which coordinated attacks on Jan. 6.
At Tarrio’s sentencing, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly agreed with prosecutors that the South Florida small businessman could’ve been charged with “terrorism” for trying to influence the government through intimidation or coercion.
Prison didn’t seem to moderate Tarrio’s fascist leanings.
”The people who did this, they need to feel the heat,” he said upon his release, referring to Biden’s Justice Department. “They need to be put behind bars, and they need to be prosecuted.”
Earlier this week, Tarrio again promised to seek revenge after a judge ruled the Proud Boys’ trademark name now belongs to the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C.
The ruling came after The Proud Boys failed to pay the $2.8 million default judgment the church was awarded in June 2023 in its civil suit against the group, which targeted and vandalized the historically Black congregation nearly a month before the insurrection.
“Their actions are a betrayal of justice,” he told The New York Times. “I hold in contempt any motions, judgments and orders issued against me.”
“Though the corrupt judicial system unjustly confined me two weeks ago, my faith in Jesus Christ has set me free,” Tarrio added. “I pray for their sake they do not suffer the same fate as Pharaoh. However, let it be known: retribution is inevitable.”
