Two days before the January 6 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters seeking to overturn the election results, Washington police arrested 36-year-old Enrique Tarrio, a leader of the Proud Boys far-right extremist organization. Police charged Tarrio over possession of two high-capacity rifle magazines and his role in burning a Black Lives Matter banner during a previous pro-Trump demonstration in the city.
Due to his arrest, Tarrio did not attend the Capitol attack, but according to Reuters , at least five other Proud Boys have since been taken into custody for participating in the attack.
Since Tarrio’s arrest, however, it has come to light that he’s been in trouble with the law before — and that he has also worked with law enforcement before, repeatedly.
As Reuters first reported, Tarrio was arrested back in 2012 for fraud for his role in a scheme to relabel and sell stolen diabetes test strips.
Reuters obtained court transcripts relating to that arrest that indicated Tarrio’s cooperation in several other investigations helped get his sentence reduced from 30 months to 16 months.
Tarrio denied ever working with law enforcement despite the court records, telling Reuters “I don’t recall any of this.”
However, Reuters spoke with both his former lawyer, Jeffrey Feiler, and the prosecutor in that case, Vanessa Singh Johannes, both of whom confirmed his role as an informant and undercover source.
Johannes told Reuters that “he cooperated with local and federal law enforcement, to aid in the prosecution of those running other, separate criminal enterprises, ranging from running marijuana grow houses in Miami to operating pharmaceutical fraud schemes.”
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According to both the transcripts and Feiler, Tarrio participated with law enforcement in a variety of cases.
The court records show Tarrio helped with an investigation into the sale of anabolic steroids, another into the sale of prescription narcotics, and a third into human smuggling, in which he “at his own risk, in an undercover role met and negotiated to pay $11,000 to members of that ring to bring in fictitious family members of his from another country.”
In addition to those cases, Tarrio also helped authorities uncover three marijuana grow houses.
“Your Honor, frankly, in all the years, which is now more than 30 that I’ve been doing this, I’ve never had a client as prolific in terms of cooperating in any respect,” Feiler said at the time, AP News reported.
Johannes also emphasized that Tarrio’s cooperation with law enforcement was “significant.”
“From day one, he was the one who wanted to talk to law enforcement, wanted to clear his name, wanted to straighten this out so that he could move on with his life. And he has in fact cooperated in a significant way,” she said at the time, AP News reported.
The judge in the case, Joan A. Leonard, was also recorded as saying that Tarrio “provided substantial assistance in the investigation and prosecution of other persons involved in criminal conduct.”
The Proud Boys organization was founded two years after Tarrio’s deal with prosecutors.
Tarrio rose to prominence within the extremist, male-chauvinist group, which has consistently been involved in violent confrontations with opponents of former President Trump, and in 2018 he became the group’s national chairman, Reuters reported. However, there’s no evidence to suggest that Tarrio has cooperated with law enforcement since 2014.
Johannes expressed some surprise that Tarrio ended up at the fore of a group bent on overturning the election. “I knew that he was a fraudster, but had no reason to know that he was also a domestic terrorist,” she said.
