Enrique Tarrio is officially seeking a pardon for the seditious conspiracy conviction he received as punishment for plotting and orchestrating violence on Jan. 6 2021. In a letter sent to President-elect Donald Trump, dated Jan. 6 of this year, Tarrio’s lawyer describes his client as guilty of nothing more than exercising his “freedom of expression.”
Tarrio was the leader of the Proud Boys in the buildup to the violence at the Capitol. Tarrio had recruited an elite corp of militants, dubbed the “Ministry of Self Defense,” to rep the militant group in Washington, D.C., and blend into the crowd. On the day of the violence, Tarrio was barred from the nation’s capital by a judicial order for an unrelated offense. But Tarrio monitored the unfolding violence and offered a mix of orders (“Don’t fucking leave”) as his subordinates led the charge into the Capitol, as well as gloating in the aftermath of the violence: “Make no mistake… we did this.”
Tarrio was convicted of seditious conspiracy in 2023 and sentenced to 22 years in prison — the longest term for any Jan. 6 defendant — by a Trump-appointed judge, who added a terrorism enhancement to the punishment. At sentencing, Tarrio admitted that Trump had lost the 2020 election, said his repeated invocation of the revolutionary violence of 1776 was a “perversion,” and apologized for his role in a “national embarassement.”
The regret and humility Tarrio displayed proclaimed at his sentencing, however, is missing in his lawyer’s letter to Trump, first published by NBC News. The letter referrs to Tarrio, who is in his 40s, by his anglicized name “Henry.” It describes him as “a young man with an aspiring future ahead of him,” while insisting that, “Henry is nothing more than a proud American that believes in true conservative values.”
The letter alleges that Tarrio has been subjected to “cruel and an unusual punishment” in prison — in particular for being kept in a “special housing unit (‘SHU’) for most of his time in custody” and allowed out of his cell for only an hour a day. (The circumstances of Tarrio’s restrictive encarceration are not clear, but inmates are often put in solitary for disciplinary reasons.) The letter, in stilted English, insists that a Trump pardon would “demonstrate commitment to lawful, peaceful, and constructive contributions.”
During the 2024 campaign, Trump made pardoning members of the Jan. 6 mob a top campaign promise, portraying the violence at the Capitol as a “day of love” and referring to the defendants and convicts as “hostages.” In typical form, Trump has been oblique about the details, evading questions about whether high-level felons like Tarrio would merit clemency, while still noting that “you cannot get a fair trial,” in Washington, D.C. Trump’s pardon pledge has received pushback, including from the head of the Capitol Police, who cautioned that clemency for those guilty of injuring or endangering law enforcement would be an affront to those in blue.
A spokesperson for Trump deflected when Rolling Stone asked about pardons for the likes of Tarrio and fellow seditionists like Oath Keepers honcho Stewart Rhodes, insisting that Trump’s decisions would be made on “a case-by-case basis for those who were denied due process and unfairly targeted by the justice system.”
