Best Local Boy Gone Bad
Enrique Tarrio
He’s back — and like many other far-right leaders who served time for the January 6 insurrection, he’s returned with a kind of vengeance. Earlier this year, onetime Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was released from federal prison after serving less than two years of a 22-year sentence for seditious conspiracy and other charges related to his role in the J6 U.S. Capitol riot. Although Tarrio was not physically present at the Capitol on that day in 2021, prosecutors described him as a key ringleader of the insurrection, pointing to his creation of the Proud Boys’ Ministry of Self Defense, which helped coordinate — and later celebrate — the attack. The Miami-born Afro-Cuban, along with other members and leaders of far-right groups, was pardoned by President Donald Trump almost immediately after his return to the White House. Since Tarrio arrived home, he’s vowed revenge against those responsible for his prosecution. “The people who did this, they need to feel the heat, they need to be put behind bars, and they need to be prosecuted,” he said in an interview with right-wing commentator Alex Jones. To describe him as gone might be an understatement.