Enrique Tarrio

Enrique Tarrio (born ) is the chairman of the Proud Boys, a 
Tarrio, who is Cuban-American and of Afro-Cuban background, served as the Florida state director of the grassroots organization Latinos for Trump. In 2020, Tarrio was a candidate in the Republican primary election for Florida's 27th congressional district, but withdrew.
Life and career.
Enrique Tarrio was born in and raised in Little Havana, a neighborhood in Miami, Florida. Tarrio is of Cuban heritage and identifies as Afro-Cuban. He has been married and divorced.
After 2004, Tarrio relocated to a small town in North Florida to run a poultry farm. He later returned to Miami. He has also founded a security equipment installation firm and another providing GPS tracking for companies. Tarrio owns a Miami T-shirt business, known as the 1776 Shop, an online vendor for right-wing merchandise. "Slate" described the 1776 Shop as a "freewheeling online emporium for far-right merch" that sells a range of Proud Boys gear including shirts stating "Pinochet did nothing wrong".
Proud Boys.
The Proud Boys is a 
Tarrio volunteered at a Miami event for far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos in May 2017 when he encountered a member of the Proud Boys who encouraged him to join it. In August 2017, Tarrio attended the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. He said he was there to protest the removal of Confederate monuments and memorials.
In 2018, Tarrio became a fourth-degree member of the Proud Boys, a distinction reserved for those who get into a physical altercation "for the cause"; he punched a person who was believed aligned with antifa. He assumed the role of chairman for the organization on November 29, 2018, succeeding Jason Lee Van Dyke, who held the position for two days, and Van Dyke's predecessor Gavin McInnes.
Tarrio helped organize the End Domestic Terrorism rally held in Portland, Oregon, on August 17, 2019. The event, co-organized by Joe Biggs, was framed as a response to the June 2019 assault on conservative blogger Andy Ngo.
Tarrio attended a pro-Trump march on December 12, 2020, in Washington, D.C., along with around two hundred other Proud Boys. He was arrested in connection with the march on a misdemeanor destruction of property charge related to the burning of a Black Lives Matter flag stolen from a church.
In January 2021, Reuters reported that Tarrio had been an informant to both federal and local law enforcement between 2012 and 2014. This report contributed to rifts within the Proud Boys. In the aftermath of the January 2021 storming of the United States Capitol, chapters of the organization split with the national group. Several chapters across three states pointed to Tarrio's past as an informant as a reason for their splintering from the national organization. The Oklahoma chapter also split from the national group because of Tarrio, blaming his "failure to take disciplinary measures [which] have jeopardized our brothers safety and the integrity of our brotherhood". Tarrio himself did not participate in the storming of the Capitol, having been arrested two days earlier in Washington, D.C., and ordered to stay away from the city. Later, he said he would neither "support" nor "condemn" the attack and did not "sympathize" with lawmakers.
Political views.
In regard to his views on extremist groups and ideologies, Tarrio has been quoted as saying, "I denounce white supremacy. I denounce anti-Semitism. I denounce racism. I denounce fascism. I denounce communism and any other -ism that is prejudiced towards people because of their race, religion, culture, tone of skin." In regard to his own ethnicity, he has said, "I'm pretty brown, I'm Cuban. There's nothing white supremacist about me."
After Tarrio confronted and shouted expletives at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Coral Gables in late 2018, the chairman of the Miami-Dade Republican Party apologized and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio compared the disruptors to the "repudiation mobs Castro has long ago used in Cuba."
In 2018, Twitter removed Tarrio's account, amongst others related to the Proud Boys, citing how platform policy prohibited accounts related to violent extremist groups. The following year, another account created by Tarrio to evade the suspension was detected and removed from the platform by Twitter.
Tarrio said he is a close friend of Roger Stone, a Trump ally who is a high-profile Proud Boys supporter.<ref name="Times 2020/09/30"></ref> After Stone was arrested in January 2019, Tarrio appeared outside the courtroom in a shirt emblazoned with the message "Roger Stone did nothing wrong". At a "Stop the Steal" rally in December 2020, Tarrio stood on stage with Stone.
Tarrio began a run for Congress for Florida's 27th district in 2020, but withdrew before the Republican Party primary. In his campaign's responses to a Ballotpedia survey done in 2019, Tarrio listed criminal justice reform, protection of the Second Amendment, countering domestic terrorism, ending the war on drugs, free speech on digital platforms, and immigration reform among some of his priorities.
Legal dealings.
In 2004, when he was 20 years old, Tarrio was convicted of theft. He was sentenced to community service and three years of probation and was ordered to pay restitution. In 2013, Tarrio was sentenced to 30 months (of which he spent 16) in federal prison for rebranding and reselling stolen medical devices. According to a January 2021 Reuters report, between 2012 and 2014 Tarrio had been an informant to both federal and local law enforcement; in a 2014 federal court hearing, Tarrio's lawyer said that Tarrio had been a "prolific" cooperator who had assisted the government in the investigation and prosecution of more than twelve people in cases involving anabolic steroids, gambling, and human smuggling; had helped identify three "grow houses" where marijuana was cultivated; and had repeatedly worked undercover to aid in investigations. Tarrio denied working undercover or cooperating with prosecutions, but the court transcript contradicted the denial, and the former federal prosecutor in the proceeding against Tarrio confirmed that he cooperated.
Tarrio was arrested by Washington, D.C., police on January 4, 2021, and charged with one misdemeanor count of destruction of property in connection with the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner stolen from a Washington, D.C. church during a pro-Trump march on December 12, 2020 that drew around 200 Proud Boys. Tarrio acknowledged that he had burned the banner, but denied that the act was a hate crime. A statement released by African Methodist Episcopal Church, which was one of two historically black churches in D.C. targeted on December 12, said that the church had sued Tarrio and the Proud Boys organization. Tarrio was also charged with two felony counts of possession of a high capacity feeding device after two high-capacity firearms magazines were found on Tarrio when he was arrested. As a condition of his release on bail on January 5, 2021, Tarrio was banned from entering Washington except for trial or meeting with his lawyers. The FBI later said they had arrested Tarrio in an attempt to prevent the storming of the United States Capitol.