Former head of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tario, was just sentenced to 22
years in prison for seditious conspiracy and leading a failed plot to
prevent the transfer of power during the 2020 presidential election.
Now, the sentence from District Judge Timothy Kelly,
who is a Donald Trump appointee, is now the longest sentence given to
anyone involved in the January 6 Capitol riots.
Keep in mind that Tario wasn't even there, although he played a big role in
organizing the riots that took place that day.
Now, here is what the District Judge Timothy Kelly, said in his decision.
The jury didn't convict anyone for engaging in politics.
They convicted Mr. Tario and others of engaging in seditious conspiracy.
I don't have any indication that he is remorseful for
the actual things he is convicted of, which is seditious conspiracy and
conspiracy to obstruct the counting of electoral votes.
The judge continues that Mr. Tario was the ultimate leader of that conspiracy.
I don't really think this is super debatable.
Now, during that months long trial,
prosecutors showed evidence that Tario helped to create a command
structure with the Proud Boys in the lead up to the January 6 Capitol riots.
And even dictated how members of the organization would work when
attending high profile rallies.
Tario again was not present in Washington, DC on January 6.
He was actually banned from being there because of his previous activities,
but ultimately expressed his support for the rioters online and
was in fact, in touch with his co defendants, Joseph Biggs and
Ethan Nordian, who were there on the ground.
Now, Kelly sentenced those individuals to lengthy sentences as well,
Ethan Nordian and Joseph Biggs, two of the far right organization's top lieutenants,
to 18 and 17 year prison sentences, respectively.
Zachary Rell, a local Proud Boys chapter leader,
was also sentenced to 15 years behind bars, while Dominic Pizzola,
a low level member and the only defendant acquitted
of the seditious conspiracy charge, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
So some pretty hefty sentences for their role in what happened on January 6.
Something to keep in mind as the Trump indictments move forward in
regard to his role in election interference.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's another conviction on seditious
conspiracy earlier in the show.
We're talking about the 14th Amendment possibility that Donald Trump could be
disqualified from office for leading us an insurrection against the US government.
If you do that, you cannot run for office again.
Well, he just got convicted of seditious conspiracy.
So who organized it overall?
Was it enrique Tario and he did it without Donald Trump?
No, I think Donald Trump, at a minimum aided and abetted that and
that's what the 14th Amendment says and was actually the leader of that movement.
So the 14th Amendment case is pretty solid against Trump if anyone actually
dares to follow the Constitution.
Now, in terms of Tario, his lawyer is saying, hey, he's not a terrorist
because he's an American and he's not a foreigner and stuff.
>> Speaker 1: He's just a misguided patriot.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, well, if a misguided patriot tries to murder the President,
for example, whether it's Biden nor Trump, I don't care that he's a terrorist.
I don't care that he's American or not.
Now, this is not murder, but this was sedition, sedition against America.
That's as significant a crime as you can get.
I don't care that you were misguided.
You should not have organized people to do violence and to try to intimidate American
politicians and subvert democracy because you're an idiot and
didn't know what you were doing, according to your lawyer.
I don't think it helps your case at all.
In response to the sentence, Tario said the following,
I've always tried to hold myself to a higher standard and I failed.
I held myself morally above others, and this trial has shown me how wrong I was.
I spent the last year and a half trying to figure out how I ended up at this podium
on November 3, 2020, something that I never expected happened.
My candidate lost.
I felt like something was personally stolen from me.
Every media channel that I turned to told me I was justified.
>> Speaker 2: Well, that's an interesting comment, that last sentence.
>> I think that that's an incredibly interesting comment.
And I think that, listen, just because conservative media is feeding you
a narrative, by the way, conservative media, left wing media doesn't matter.
I think everyone has an understanding of the difference between right and
wrong, right.
And I would just ask anyone who thought that their actions were
justified that day to consider whether their loyalty to Donald Trump should
overwhelm loyalty to our country and to our democratic process.
You get what I'm saying?
>> Speaker 2: I do.
Of course that's true and that's why he's going to prison for 22 years.
At the same time, he's not wrong, that last sentence, every right wing media
outlet was telling you that basically this election was stolen from Trump.
So if you're a right winger and those are the outlets that you trusted,
you really thought the election was stolen from Donald Trump, and how mad would you
be if Trump had stolen election from Biden with his stupid fake elector plot, right?
I would have been livid beyond imagination.
And so that's how these folks were.
But we never, ever punish the powerful.
We always punish the people underneath them.
So Tario has no power at all.
He doesn't buy any ads.
He doesn't have any money to spend in corporate media, etc.
So it's easy to bury him for 22 years.
I'm not saying that the decision is wrong.
I think it's perfectly right.
He shouldn't have done it, and these are the consequences.
But they never apply the law to the powerful.
So now they're doing it belatedly to Trump.
Let's see if it holds.
There's not gonna be any accountability for right wing media.
I mean, they had Fox News got the accountability of an 800 million dollar
settlement.
And that's not bad, right?
But legally, criminally there's never any accountability for
the right wing media just producing a factory of lies.
>> Speaker 1: I mean, to be honest with you, had Trump not been indicted for
his role, had the co conspirators not been indicted,
this would have been very similar to the outcome of
the 2008 economic collapse, right.
That was done as a result of Wall Street and just unbelievable greed.
Essentially taking out all those mortgages that they knew were faulty,
knew that they were going to default, and then packaging them up as securities and
then betting against it.
That is what crashed the economy.
And who ended up paying the consequences of that of that behavior?
Was it the actual executives who were signing off on those maneuvers?
Or was it like I think one person got prosecuted, like a low level individual in
Wall Street, not someone in the higher up executive role.
But luckily in this case, we do have Donald Trump and
his co conspirators also indicted.
That's the right thing to do.
If you have Trump's minions facing incredibly lengthy sentences,
it's only right the head of all of this faces consequences as well.
We'll see how that all plays.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, of course I didn't watch the whole trial, so I don't know how
much they discussed the fake elector plot and whether Rhodes, for example,
who's ahead of the Oath Keepers or Tario, who's ahead of Proud boys knew about it.
But to me that's critical because if you knew the whole point of the riot is to
disrupt the proceedings so that Pence can say, hey, let's send it back to the States
and then they're gonna unleash the fake electors and try to steal the election.
That to me makes you a thousand times more culpable.
If for example, I'm gonna say something controversial.
If the right wing had rioted and looted even, but they didn't do it at the Capitol
and it wasn't connected to a fake elector plot, then I would say that's bad and
they should get punishment for breaking and entering and all those other things.
But that is a little bit of a voice unheard and
the old line about how riots are about voices that are not heard,
and so now no one ever dares to apply that to the right wing,
but they felt like their voice was not being heard.
Now they were misled.
They were 100% factually incorrect, but in their minds they thought,
my God, I'm going to save the country.
>> Yeah. >> Right?
And so if they were super frustrated and they did breaking and
entering and they weren't trying to actually end our democracy,
I would have a completely different view of it, okay.
But you can't excuse breaking into the Capitol, threatening to
murder government officials, including the Republican Vice President, and
having a fake electoral plot to completely destroy our democracy.
And replace it with what would be a fascist dictator at that point,
Donald Trump.
>> Yeah. >> No, that's what you get 22 years for.
And so he says he's remorseful now, but
that's what they always say right before sentencing.
And then usually right afterwards, they change their tune and
go Donald Trump, right.
That's what one of the other Proud Boys leaders did immediately after sentencing.
>> Speaker 1: Yeah, look, I don't think what you're saying is
controversial at all.
You don't wanna set a precedent where rioters are sentenced to 22 years in
prison.
This wasn't simply about rioting.
This went much further than that which is why you see these lengthy
sentences specifically for the individuals who organized what took place on that day.