WASHINGTON (AP) — The former leader of the Proud Boys and the founder of the Oath Keepers have been released from prison after their lengthy sentences for seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol were wiped away by a sweeping order from President Donald Trump benefiting more than 1,500 defendants.
Enrique Tarrio and Stewart Rhodes were two of the highest-profile Jan. 6 defendants and received some of the harshest punishments in what became the largest investigation in Justice Department history. Rhodes, of Granbury, Texas, was serving an 18-year prison sentence, and Tarrio, of Miami, was serving a 22-year sentence after they were convicted of orchestrating plots to stop the peaceful transfer of power after Trump, a Republican, lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden.
Their attorneys confirmed to The Associated Press on Tuesday they had been released hours after Trump pardoned, commuted the sentences of or ordered the dismissal of cases against all the 1,500-plus people who were charged with federal crimes in the riot. Trump's action paved the way for the release of extremist group leaders convicted in major conspiracy cases, as well people who violently attacked law enforcement officers defending the Capitol.
Trump also ordered the attorney general to seek the dismissal of roughly 450 cases that were still pending before judges.
Trump made rewriting the history of the Jan. 6 attack a centerpiece of his bid to return to the White House, and the pardon of the rioters fulfills a campaign pledge to free defendants he contends were politically persecuted by the Justice Department.
Trump said the pardons will end “a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years” and begin “a process of national reconciliation.”
Trump had suggested in the weeks leading up to his return to the White House that instead of blanket pardons, he would look at the Jan. 6 defendants on a case-by-case basis. Vice President JD Vance said just days ago that people responsible for the violence during the Capitol riot “obviously” should not be pardoned.
More than 1,200 people across the U.S. were convicted of Jan. 6 crimes over the last four years, including roughly 200 people who pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement. More than a dozen defendants were convicted of seditious conspiracy, a rare Civil War-era charge and the most serious one brought in the Jan. 6 attack.
Tarrio, who led the neofacist Proud Boys group as it became a force in mainstream Republican circles, was convicted in 2023 of seditious conspiracy and other crimes after a monthslong trial on allegations that he orchestrated violence to overturn Biden's 2020 victory over Trump.
Tarrio wasn’t in Washington on Jan. 6, because he had been arrested two days earlier in a separate case and ordered out of the capital city. But prosecutors said he organized and directed the attack by Proud Boys who stormed the Capitol that day.
Rhodes was convicted in a separate trial alongside members of his far-right militia group who prosecutors alleged were intent on keeping Trump in power at all costs. Over seven weeks of testimony, jurors heard how Rhodes rallied his followers to fight to defend Trump, discussed the prospect of a “bloody” civil war and warned that the Oath Keepers may have to “rise up in insurrection” to defeat Biden if Trump didn’t act.
Alanna Durkin Richer And Michael Kunzelman, The Associated Press
