Enrique Tarrio, a former national leader of the far-right group the Proud Boys, was arrested on Friday near the US Capitol on a charge that he assaulted a woman protesting against a gathering attended by him and others who received presidential pardons for crimes stemming from Donald Trump supporters’ 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
Capitol police said officers saw Tarrio strike the protester’s cellphone and arm after the woman placed the phone close to his face as they walked near the Capitol. Tarrio had just left a news conference that had ended “without incident”, police said.
“The woman told our officers that she wanted to be a complainant, and [Tarrio] was arrested for the simple assault,” police said in a statement.
An attorney who represented Tarrio in his Capitol attack case did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Tarrio, of Miami, had been serving a 22-year sentence – the longest among hundreds of related cases – when the US president in January granted clemency to all of the more than 1,500 people charged in the Capitol attack. The move was one of Trump’s first acts after retaking the White House, which he lost to Joe Biden in 2020 before then defeating Biden’s vice-president in November’s election.
Trump’s decision to grant clemency to Capitol attackers who committed violence that day is deeply unpopular among Americans, according to a new poll. More than eight in 10 respondents to a Washington Post/Ipsos survey released on Thursday disapproved of that decision.
A jury had convicted Tarrio and three of his lieutenants of seditious conspiracy for plotting the Capitol attack as a desperate attempt to keep Trump in office despite his electoral defeat to Biden.
Tarrio attended a press conference on Friday with other Proud Boys members as well as the Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who also had been convicted of seditious conspiracy but was freed from prison in January after Trump commuted his 18-year sentence.
after newsletter promotion
Associated Press contributed reporting
English (US)