A lawyer for the former leader of the Proud Boys has asked President-elect Trump to consider issuing him a “full and complete” pardon for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
Nayib Hassan, who represents Enrique Tarrio, wrote in a Jan. 6 letter to Trump that the ex-Proud Boys national chairman was targeted by the Biden administration for his political views. Tarrio is currently serving a 22-year sentence after he was convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in a plot to subvert the 2020 presidential election results by force.
“Henry ‘Enrique’ Tarrio was portrayed throughout the Government’s case as a right-wing extremist that promoted a neo-fascist militant organization,” Hassan wrote in the Jan. 6 letter, obtained by The Hill. “Henry is nothing more than a proud American that believes in true conservative values.”
In the letter, Hassan noted that Tarrio was not at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after being ordered out of the city following a previous arrest for burning a stolen Black Lives Matter banner and accused the government of prosecuting Tarrio and four other Proud Boys for “expressing their freedom of expression.”
He said Tarrio would honor a pardon with the “respect, gratitude and integrity it deserves.” The letter has already been sent to people on Trump’s team, Hassan said.
Prosecutors said at trial that Tarrio spearheaded the Proud Boys’ efforts to assemble in droves and descend on Washington after Trump sent a message to his supporters to “be there, will be wild!” Though Tarrio was not at the Capitol that day, several of his top lieutenants were at the front of the mob and pushing it forward.
Three of them — Joe Biggs, Ethan Nordean and Zachary Rehl — were convicted of seditious conspiracy alongside Tarrio at trial in 2023. A fourth Proud Boy tried in that group, Dominic Pezzola, used a stolen police riot shield to smash open a Capitol window, letting in the first members of the mob; he was acquitted of sedition, but convicted of other serious felonies.
Biggs, a Florida Proud Boy and onetime correspondent for the far-right website “InfoWars,” previously sought a pardon from Trump.
