Jan. 6 Defendants Wanted A Defiant Capitol Photo Op. It Ended With Enrique Tarrio’s Arrest.

It was supposed to be a defiant return to the Capitol for the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and their far-right allies who were pardoned by Donald Trump for their role in the Jan. 6 attack on the halls of Congress.

It ended with the arrest of Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio for allegedly assaulting a protester who got in his face.

Tarrio and other prominent former Jan. 6 defendants had gathered at the Capitol on Friday for a press conference, pledging to seek legal revenge against the government that jailed them. But a handful of demonstrators was also nearby, loudly heckling the group.

After the press conference, one of those demonstrators put her hand near Tarrio's face as he was speaking with a photographer. Tarrio swatted it away. Capitol Police officers quickly surrounded him, handcuffed him and took him into custody. The police later described the incident as a simple assault, a type of misdemeanor.

The episode provided a moment of historical symmetry for the Capitol Police, who arrested Tarrio four years after he helped organize a group of Proud Boys that formed the vanguard of the riot that injured 140 law enforcement officers and threatened the transfer of power. He was convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to 22 years in prison but was freed by a Trump pardon as part of the president's grant of mass clemency to Jan. 6 defendants.

Minutes before the scuffle — which a POLITICO reporter witnessed — Tarrio was flanked by dozens of other newly pardoned Jan. 6 defendants, including several other Proud Boys like Seattle's Ethan Nordean and Oath Keepers leaders, like Stewart Rhodes, who were similarly convicted of seditious conspiracy. Richard “Bigo” Barnett, who infamously propped his feet on a desk in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Capitol suite, was there. So was Guy Reffitt, who carried a pistol onto Capitol grounds and helped the mob advance to the foot of the building. New York Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola, who stole a police riot shield and smashed a Senate-wing window with it, stood alongside Tarrio.

Others who played memorable roles in the mob were on hand as well, including Jake Lang, who escaped an imminent trial on assault charges, and Couy Griffin, the head of Cowboys for Trump.

The group recreated the route around the Capitol they took on Jan. 6, 2021, ending at the grass on the Capitol’s East Front. There, they posed for photos and chanted “Whose house? Our house,” a reprise of the chants that echoed through the halls of the Capitol while lawmakers and staff fled for safety.

At the press conference, arranged while many of the former Jan. 6 defendants were on a break from visiting the CPAC conference in Maryland, the former defendants pledged to sue the Justice Department. They hope the department welcomes their claims, given its leadership’s embrace of Trump’s assertion that the prosecutions were a “national disgrace.”

Tarrio seemed amused and bewildered by the arrest, grimacing as officers swarmed him and set up an impromptu perimeter. The woman involved in the incident had been trailing the group for an hour, shouting them down during the press conference, calling them “Nazis” and placing herself in front of their group photos while flipping them off.

After arresting Tarrio, the police interviewed the woman, who appeared to be uninjured.

Tarrio stood silently as police quickly put him in cuffs, patted him down and set up a perimeter in the shadow of the Capitol. He was then ushered into a police van and taken into custody.