Monday 6 June 2022 10:46 PM Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and four lieutenants are charged in connection ... trends now
Proud Boys leader, Enrique Tarrio, and four of his lieutenants have been charged with seditious conspiracy for a coordinated attack on the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory, authorities said Monday.
Tarrio, the Proud Boys chairman, and the four others were previously charged with different conspiracy counts.
These are the most serious charges leveled against Tarrio and the right-win group to date.
Tarrio did not take part in the January 6, 2021 riot on the Capitol, but allegedly orchestrated the activities from a 'command and control' structure within the fringe group.
Police arrested Tarrio in Washington two days before the riot and charged him with vandalizing a Black Lives Matter banner at a historic Black church during a protest in December 2020.
Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio pretended to hold a lighter to the US Capitol before reporting to a Washington DC jail in December 2020 to begin a five month sentence
Tarrio was also snapped giving a v-sign close to the Capitol on Monday night ahead of his sentence
Tarrio posed with his Proud Boy pal and a rooster ornament before beginning his sentence
Before the riot, the Proud Boys chairman created a subgroup called the Ministry of Self Defense, or MOSD, which would be in charge of 'national rally planning,' according to a federal detention memo.
Tarrio was released from jail on January 5 after serving his five-month sentence for that case.
He was ordered to leave D.C. but instead went to an underground parking garage where he met with a documentary film crew, other Proud Boys and Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, the founder of the Oath Keepers, another far right group that was represented in the riot.
'We did this,' the federal government says Tarrio texted to one of his confederates after the rioting began.
The new riot-related indictments against Proud Boys members are among the most serious filed so far, but they aren't the first of their kind.
Eleven members or associates of the anti-government Oath Keepers militia group, including Rhodes, were indicted in January on seditious conspiracy charges in the Capitol attack.
Tarrio, pictured in Portland in September 2020, has been leader of the Proud Boys since 2018
Tarrio, pictured front in black with a megaphone, took to the streets of Portland to protest at far-left group Antifa's behavior in the Oregon city
'On January 6, Tarrio’s men—the leaders and members of the MOSD—were at the front of the crowd that unlawfully breached the Capitol grounds and overran police lines meant to protect the Capitol and its occupants,' according to federal prosecutors.
'Co-conspirator Dominic Pezzola was the first person to physically breach the Capitol when he used a stolen Capitol Police riot shield to break a window adjacent to the Senate Wing Door, which allowed the first members of the mob to breach the interior of the Capitol at 2:13 p.m.'
Tarrio's lawyer Sabino Jauregui did not immediately respond to calls for comment.
More than three dozen people charged in the Capitol siege have been identified by federal authorities as Proud Boys leaders, members or associates.
A New York man pleaded
