One month after being pardoned by President Trump for his role in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, was arrested again on charges of assaulting a protester at a bizarre news conference held outside the Capitol on Friday.
Mr. Tarrio was taken away by the Capitol Police after he swiped at a protester who had been persistently interrupting him and other speakers at the event by blowing a whistle and screaming insults. According to a spokesman for the Capitol Police, Mr. Tarrio struck the woman’s arm as she put her cellphone close to his face.
He was subsequently arrested on charges of simple assault.
It was an astonishing development that Mr. Tarrio — fresh from being pardoned — was taken into custody again after appearing with several other Jan. 6 defendants outside the very building that sat at the center of the riotous attack that sent many of them to prison. The officers who made the arrest were part of the same organization that bore the brunt of the mob’s violence that day.
Before Mr. Trump’s clemency grant, Mr. Tarrio had been serving a 22-year sentence after his conviction on seditious conspiracy charges at a lengthy trial in Washington two years ago. His four co-defendants in the case — Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola — were also present at the news conference, but did not get into scuffles with protesters.
Mr. Biggs said the five men split up after the publicity event was over, moving in different directions to avoid attracting further attention from protesters. He said he learned that Mr. Tarrio had been arrested only after he had returned to the hotel where he has been staying while he and the other Proud Boys attend the Conservative Political Action Conference.
The event at the Capitol, which Mr. Tarrio had been promoting while at CPAC, appeared to be an opportunity for him and his compatriots in the far-right group to tell their version of what took place on Jan. 6.
The men sought to play down their own role in the violence that day, blaming the police and claiming that their joint prosecution, culminating in a multiweek trial, had been unfair.
When Mr. Pezzola, who used a stolen police riot shield to shatter a window at the Capitol, was asked by a reporter if the action had escalated the chaos on the ground, he said he disagreed.
“Escalated? No,” he responded. “It was escalated by the police.”
Stewart Rhodes, another far-right leader convicted of sedition in connection with Jan. 6, also spoke at the news conference. But his remarks were largely drowned out by protesters blowing whistles and air horns. Mr. Rhodes, who founded the Oath Keepers militia, was serving 18 years in prison when Mr. Trump commuted his sentence on Inauguration Day.
Many other pardoned rioters, who were already in Washington for CPAC, also attended the event at the Capitol. Among them were Jake Lang, who was charged with assaulting the police with a baseball bat, and Richard Barnett, who carried an electric prod inside the Capitol where he sat with his feet up at a desk in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office.
