“A lawyer for former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio of Florida said Donald Trump is to blame for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, and federal authorities are using Tarrio as a scapegoat for the former president’s actions,” the Associated Press reported on Tuesday, April 25, 2023.
Tarrio wasn’t in Washington D.C. on Jan. 6, but is charged with seditious conspiracy for “mobilizing and leading members of the Proud Boys” who attacked the Capitol that day. Prosecutors say Tarrio and his co-defendants, including one from Washington State, “claimed credit for what happened.”
That doesn’t make them guilty of what other members of their group who did participate in the riot did. Prosecutors have to show the leaders instigated and organized it. Whether they did is for the jury to decide. But the law doesn’t require them to have been present.
Tarrio isn’t the first person charged in connection with the Capitol riot to try blaming it all on Trump. That hasn’t worked for any defendant so far, and probably won’t work for him either. Nobody makes Tarrio wear Proud Boys insignia and dress up in body armor (see photo). What kind of freak does that? A freak like him, and he does it of his own free will.
Read story here.