Enrique Tarrio, 36-year-old Miami-based, Cuban American leader of the extremist group the Proud Boys, worked undercover for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, this according to a former prosecutor and a 2014 federal court transcript obtained exclusively by Reuters.
According to the former prosecutor, and FBI agent and Tarrio’s lawyer, Tarrio helped the Bureau prosecute 13 individuals in cases dealing with everything from drugs to fraud. When confronted by Reuters with the evidence of his link to the FBI, Tarrio denied it.
“I don’t know any of this,” he told Reuters. “I don’t recall any of this.”
Tarrio was arrested in Washington, D.C. two days before the Capitol Hill insurrection by pro-Trump rioters, some of them Proud Boy members. He was found with two high-capacity rifle magazines. Tarrio was ordered to leave D.C. pending a court date this summer.
Because of his work with the FBI, Tarrio’s lawyer asked the judge in his 2014 fraud case to reduce his prison sentence. He called his client’s work with the FBI “prolific.”
During Tarrio’s trial, an FBI agent called him a “key component” in police investigations. The judge in the case said Tarrio “provided substantial assistance in the investigation and prosecution of other persons involved in criminal conduct.”
According to Reuters, Tarrio became the national chairman of the Proud Boys in 2018. After Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, Tarrio led the extremist group through D.C. spouting lies about widespread election fraud into a bullhorn. “To the parasites both in Congress, and in that stolen White House,” he said. “You want a war, you got one!”
Besides wanting to know what Tarrio was doing at the White House two weeks before the attack on the Capitol, the only other question we have left is, when is the Netflix true-crime docuseries going to start?