Sheriff Enrique Tarrio? Proud Boys leader mulls his future | The Excerpt
On Sunday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: On January 20th, less than two years into a 22-year federal prison sentence for seditious conspiracy for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio was pardoned by newly elected President Donald Trump. Tarrio is the former (and possibly current) leader of the Proud Boys, a loose nationwide coalition of men who have targeted various communities in the past. Paste BN National Correspondent and Extremism Reporter Will Carless joins The Excerpt to share insights from his exclusive sit-down with Enrique Tarrio.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
... On January 20th, less than two years into a 22-year federal present sentence for seditious conspiracy for his role in the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol, Henry Enrique Tarrio was pardoned by newly elected president, Donald Trump.
President Donald Trump:
So this is January 6th, these are the hostages, approximately 1,500, for a pardon.
President Donald Trump:
Full pardon.
Enrique Tarrio:
My name is Enrique Tarrio, I just got pardoned by the president for a 22-year sentence that I was doing for not being at the Capitol, and I am part of one of the greatest organizations in the world called The Proud Boys.
Dana Taylor:
Tarrio is the former and possibly current leader of The Proud Boys, a loose nationwide coalition of men who've targeted various communities in the past. Paste BN national correspondent and extremism reporter, Will Carless, had an exclusive sit down with Enrique Tarrio following his release.
Will Carless:
There's an awful lot of members of the LGBTQ community, there's an awful lot of people of color in this country who are sitting there really scared right now, particularly if they're in red states, I'm talking about places like the South, where they look at what's going on in the country and they're terrified.
Dana Taylor:
Hello, and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Sunday, February 16th, 2025. Will Carless joins me now. Will, thanks for coming on.
Will Carless:
Thanks for having me on.
Dana Taylor:
Will, who are The Proud Boys?
Will Carless:
I would call them an extremist street gang that began in about 2016, started off as kind of a drinking fraternity, is what they called themselves, just kind of a place for guys to get together and let off some steam and get drunk, and has morphed into, really, a gathering place and a brand for some of the most extremist people on the far-right in this country. It's sort of become a place for everyone from white supremacists, to anti-Semites, to people who are really virulently hateful towards women and the LGBTQ community to kind of come together under a collective brand and both protest, go out and get into fights, and also in some cases get involved in politics too.
Dana Taylor:
You asked Enrique Tarrio about efforts by many, including Donald Trump, to rewrite history regarding what happened on January 6th over the last four years.
Will Carless:
Yeah, so I asked Tarrio when he was inside, whether he was following the kind of whitewashing of the January 6th insurrection right down to Donald Trump eventually four years later calling this a day of love, and here's how he responded.
Enrique Tarrio:
I don't think it was a good day. I think there could have been different decisions made by individuals present at the Capitol, but it also was a horrible day, because they used that as a way to lock people up for decades. I'm of the position, and I've always held the position that if you put your hands on a cop, you should be charged, if you trespass, you should be charged with trespassing.
Dana Taylor:
Let's start with his sentence, why was Tarrio convicted and sentenced to a 22-year prison term? What was his role on January 6th?
Will Carless:
Tarrio's is a pretty extraordinary case, unlike most of the others, if not all of the other people who were convicted of seditious conspiracy, he was not in Washington, D.C. on January 6th. He had been arrested on January 4th, and had been banned from the District of Columbia by a judge. And he wasn't there, he was in a hotel room, I believe, watching it happen on TV.
What he was accused of and what he was found guilty of was essentially planning an insurrection. It was getting people to the Capitol on January 6th, it was creating a secret messaging group among key leaders of The Proud Boys that was to both arrange logistics, and figure out tactics, and then get a lot of people to the Capitol on January 6th, with the ultimate goal of trying to stop the certification of the 2020 election. So prosecutors argued that, even though he wasn't there on the day, he played this kind of pivotal planning role. In fact, they pretty much call him the organizer of January 6th, and that's what he was accused of, that's what he was found guilty of, that's why he was convicted to 22 years in prison for.
Dana Taylor:
And Will, I was struck by what he shared with you about his sentence.
Enrique Tarrio:
It's crazy I'm going to say this, but I'm thankful I got a 22-year sentence, because that was the point where people go, "Whoa, hold on. Why is this guy getting 22 years?" And then they started looking at the other cases, and they're like, "Well, wait, he's not the only case, there's even cases where people got four years for just entering the Capitol."
Dana Taylor:
He's describing these convictions for what in other circumstances might be minor infractions, such as trespassing, as though they weren't happening against the backdrop of the certification of the presidency by Congress. Did he acknowledge that in any way?
Will Carless:
He did, and he acknowledged that this wasn't a perfect day, he acknowledged that bad things happened on that day. And that's something that I've heard from other members of The Proud Boys, other people convicted of seditious conspiracy. It's not like they are saying that this is a day of love, they're saying that people did things that they should not have done on that day, and ultimately did they regret that?
Dana Taylor:
It's clear that he still has the mind of the injured party here, who would he like to see held to account for his conviction? And does he hold Trump accountable?
Will Carless:
Definitely not Trump. I mean, Trump as far as he's concerned, is everything from kind of savior, to leader, to sort of future Messiah as far as Enrique Tarrio is concerned. The people he wants to see held accountable are the people who brought him and his fellow Proud Boys, and other people involved in the insurrection to justice. So a couple of days before I sat down with Enrique Tarrio, he told the conspiracy theorist and radio host, Alex Jones, that he wanted people to feel the heat for what had happened to him and his fellow Proud Boys. And I asked him what he meant by that.
Enrique Tarrio:
What I mean by they is pretty much anybody who perpetrated what I believe to be injustice, specifically in these January 6 cases. And when I say feel the heat, I want to be clear, I want investigations.
Dana Taylor:
In 2020 during a presidential debate, Donald Trump was asked if he condemned white supremacist groups who'd been involved in violent demonstrations with press to answer and condemn The Proud Boys specifically, here's what he said.
President Donald Trump:
Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.
Dana Taylor:
Will, are they a white supremacist group?
Will Carless:
That's a very important question, and it's a question that I get asked a lot, and that I discuss with colleagues and academics a lot. I have never believed that The Proud Boys was founded as a white supremacist group. It wasn't to begin with, I should say, a huge part of their identity. I believe what's happened with The Proud Boys is, it's become the go-to brand, the go-to group for young white supremacists in this country to gather towards. I think that it's become a symbol, and a collective group where white supremacists in this country feel comfortable collecting. And I think that leaders like Enrique Tarrio, who himself is of, as he describes, Afro-Cuban heritage, have essentially let that happen without really stopping it from happening. And I put some of this to Tarrio. We sat down for a while, and I said, "Look, this is what's happened to your group. Wouldn't you agree?" And here's what he said.
Enrique Tarrio:
That's the problem with reporting on us and not doing what you're doing right now is kind of just, "Listen, these are who these people are, like it or love it." Let the reader decide. But we're not white supremacists, we're not Nazis, we're not anti-Semitic. I'll tell you what, there is no group I do not insult or make a joke about, there is no group. I make fun of my own Cubans, I make fun of these honkeys and white dudes that I have. It doesn't matter, because that's how we bond.
Dana Taylor:
Will, is Tarrio still the leader of The Proud Boys? What did he share with you regarding that?
Will Carless:
It's really hard to know exactly what's going on inside The Proud Boys at the moment, but the people that, literally their job is to research this and to keep on top of this group, to get into their chat rooms, and kind of spy on them, essentially, if you ask them, they say, "Look, there's a lot of question as to whether Tarrio and the other leaders of The Proud Boys have any sway in this group at the moment." There essentially is a big schism inside the group between people who want to keep the group moving forwards as a collective of individual chapters without any sort of central leadership, and that goes up against another group within The Proud Boys that wants to keep the current leadership of Tarrio, and Ethan Nordean, and Joe Biggs, and the other guys who were convicted for seditious conspiracy.
So I think the only answer to your question is, we don't really know. I think he sees himself very much as the leader. I'm really curious as to what Enrique Tarrio does next. Does he just kind of resurrect his T-shirt printing operation, and just live in his parents' house, and that's what he does? Or does he try to take on some sort of a bigger civic role? These guys are in a very interesting situation right now, where they have this political capital. And so I did ask Enrique Tarrio, "What's next for you?"
Enrique Tarrio:
Maybe become a police officer, maybe do that. I'm a big believer, if you want to change the system, you've got to change it from within.
Will Carless:
Okay. So Proud Boys becoming police officers?
Enrique Tarrio:
I mean, not-
Will Carless:
That's a good headline.
Enrique Tarrio:
I have one example.
Will Carless:
Okay.
Enrique Tarrio:
Don't make it the headline.
Will Carless:
Okay.
Enrique Tarrio:
But in general, I'm just saying, becoming your local councilman, becoming your local mayor, becoming your local sheriff. I wouldn't do it seriously, but I thought... I ran for Congress, and our police department just changed to a sheriff's office. They just made it a sheriff's office, so now we have to elect the sheriff. And I think it would be unrealistic, I'm just riffing here, but I run for sheriff, I actually win, and it's Sheriff Enrique Tarrio.
Will Carless:
Stranger things have happened.
Enrique Tarrio:
Stranger things have happened.
Dana Taylor:
You pointed out that there are segments of society who are fearful of The Proud Boys. Let's listen to that.
Will Carless:
There's an awful lot of members of the LGBTQ community, there's an awful lot of people of color in this country who are sitting there really scared right now, particularly if they're in red states, I'm talking about places like the South, where they look at what's going on in the country and they're terrified. They look at the fact that you got out of prison, frankly, and they're terrified. Do you have a message to those people at all?
Enrique Tarrio:
I think probably they should join their local chapter. I don't think that that fear is based on reality. We've never gone and targeted specific groups because of their color, sexual orientation or whatnot. What we do target, and I think when I say target, not physical or anything, we target the culture. We target their politics more than we target their identity.
Dana Taylor:
In terms of joining The Proud Boys, what you've uncovered through your reporting, what Tarrio says regarding what that entails doesn't jibe.
Will Carless:
Yeah, that's right. The Proud Boys have a system of what they call degrees, and this ranges from getting a Proud Boys tattoo, to... The first thing you have to do is to get sort of beaten up by the members of The Proud Boys while you recite a certain number of breakfast cereals. So there are rules. The highest level of The Proud Boys, I always understood, and what I've been told by current and former Proud Boys was, only attainable if you got into a fight with anti-fascists with antifa. And I questioned Tarrio about that, because as he's trying to portray this as a sort of non-violent sort of friendly group, I wanted to push him on that violent aspect of his organization.
Enrique Tarrio:
There's a lot of guys, they have different views on everything. My interpretation is, it is a hardship that you have to go through, and if it's a physical altercation, you cannot be the person who initiates that altercation. If you wanted a fourth degree, and you're at a rally and you have antifa on the other side, if you jump a barrier, and you run over there, and you get a physical altercation, whether you get your kicked or not, as you probably would, because pulling out there alone, that's not a fourth degree. You can't look for it. Here's my thing, you can't look for a fourth degree, it's the only degree that you can't attain by wanting to attain.
Will Carless:
As defined to you.
Enrique Tarrio:
Yeah.
Dana Taylor:
Will, you also conducted exclusive interviews with four of the top people in The Proud Boys organization. What's next for them and their group?
Will Carless:
That's right. I find myself in the interesting situation of being in a group chat on the app Telegram with the four real seditious conspiracists in The Proud Boys at the moment, and we've been talking throughout the week, and I've been asking them exactly that, what's next? And it depends who you ask, but they all have grand plans for the future, I think it's fair to say that. They may not be quite defined yet, these guys just got out of prison, just had this kind of remarkable turnaround in their lives, but they all have big plans.
So for example, Ethan Nordean, who was really the kind of leader of The Proud Boys on the streets in D.C. on the day of the insurrection, he wants to start a men's organization, a sort of a young men's entrepreneurial organization to try and direct men's energies away from the destructive and towards the productive, and he won't really quite go into it. Zachary Rehl, who also was there on January 6th, and was also convicted of seditious conspiracy, he wants to run for Congress. He's not sure which seat yet, but that's what he wants to do.
And then Joe Biggs, of all the four, he seems to have been most marked by his time inside, and what he wants to do, he told me, was to start a new criminal justice reform organization to try and free some of the people that he believes are unjustly imprisoned, and who he talked to during his time in federal prison. So these guys are not shrinking away, at least they have big plans, whether, of course, any of those plans come into fruition, or whether they just go and get drunk and put on their Proud Boys hats again is anybody's guess.
Dana Taylor:
Will, thank you so much for joining us on The Excerpt.
Will Carless:
Thanks for having me on.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaylee Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening, I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.