The mother of Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys and a chief architect of the Jan. 6 insurrection, has gone public with her plea to President-elect Donald Trump to release her son from prison.
“President Trump, I think my son and most of those J6, if not all, deserve to be home with their families,” Zuny Tarrio said in an interview with a WTVJ, an NBC affiliate in South Florida. “We’ve suffered long enough.”
Tarrio, now 40, was not in Washington, D.C., that day, but prosecutors accused him of playing a pivotal role in the riot. He was convicted of seditious conspiracy and received the longest sentence of all the Jan. 6 defendants: 22 years in prison.
But with Donald Trump hinting that he might pardon at least some of the defendants once he retakes office Jan. 20, the push has begun for him to make good on that promise.
Trump has called Jan. 6 “a day of love” and has said he could pardon all the prisoners, whom he has referred to as “patriots” and hostages,” within “nine minutes” of his return to the Oval Office.
Zuny Tarrio insisted her son is not a violent man.
“First of all, the word ‘leader’ seems to be really far-fetched because there were thousands of people on Capitol Hill that day. Not all of them were Proud Boys,” she said. “Enrique Tarrio wasn’t even there that day. He was but in the ground. He was not in Washington D.C. that day.”
While her son may have not been on the scene, other Proud Boys were.
“Hundreds have already been held accountable for their conduct on January 6, 2021, and this verdict holds some of the most prominent members of the Proud Boys accountable for their role in trying to prevent the certification of the 2020 Presidential election,” U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves for the District of Columbia said after securing guilty verdicts for Tarrio and four other Proud Boys. “The government’s evidence at trial demonstrated the crucial role that these men and their followers played in breaking through the multiple security lines that protected the Capitol.”
Zuny Tarrio placed the blame on law enforcement, saying that while the riot was unfortunate, the “government” should have never allowed it.
“I don’t think anyone honestly likes what happened January 6th,” she said. “I think the way that it happened, shouldn’t have happened. I think the government could have stopped that in a lot of ways.”
Ironically, the only man who can free the J6 defendants is the one who drove them to action in the first place by repeating false statements that the 2020 election was stolen. The riot occurred just as Congress had begun to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory, forcing lawmakers to evacuate or huddle in place.
Zuny Tarrio said she is hopeful her son will be pardoned soon.
“As a mother, it’s been horrific,” she said. “It’s a terrible feeling to have a child in federal prison without a real reason.”
Five people died within 36 hours of the insurrection, including one protester, shot by Capitol police, and a police officer who died of natural causes one day after being assaulted by the rioters. Nearly 200 police officers were injured and four of the officers who responded to the attack committed suicide.
In Tarrio’s trial, prosecutors reminded jurors of Trump’s “stand back and stand by” directive to the Proud Boy during a September 2020 presidential debate and said the so-called Western chauvinists were prepared to engage violently in order to keep Job Biden out of office.
“These men did not stand back,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason McCullough said in opening statements. “They did not stand by. Instead, they mobilized.”
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack also concluded the Proud Boys did in fact “lead the assault” on the Capitol.
