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 the organization. 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 to be 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. McInnes involved Tarrio as a prospective electoral candidate, and in that capacity both conferred with Trump right-wing confidants
Steve Bannon (whom Trump later pardoned) and
Sebastian Gorka. The event, co-organized by
Joe Biggs, was advertised as a response to the June 2019 beating up of conservative blogger
Andy Ngo. In addition to his role with the Proud Boys, 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". 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
US Senator Marco Rubio compared the disruptors to the "
repudiation mobs Castro has long ago used in Cuba." In 2018,
Twitter removed Tarrio's account, along with others related to the Proud Boys, citing how platform policy prohibited accounts related to violent extremist groups. The following year, Twitter detected and removed another account that Tarrio created to evade the suspension. Tarrio said he is a close friend of
Roger Stone, a Trump ally who is a high-profile Proud Boys supporter. After Stone was arrested in January 2019, Tarrio appeared outside the courtroom in a shirt emblazoned with the message "Roger Stone did nothing wrong". The two appeared in a video together made on December 11, 2020, the day before a "
Stop the Steal" rally where Tarrio stood on stage with Stone. On December 23, 2020, Trump pardoned Stone, whose prison sentence he had previously commuted. 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 his priorities. Tarrio and the group set fire to a "
Black Lives Matter" banner they seized from
Asbury United Methodist Church, a historic
Black church. Asbury United Methodist, along with three other churches, were vandalized that night, and more than three dozen people were arrested. Trump supporters and opponents clashed in the streets, culminating in the stabbing of four people. The
FBI later said they had arrested Tarrio in an attempt to prevent the
2021 United States Capitol attack. In July 2021, as part of a
plea agreement with prosecutors, Tarrio pleaded guilty to destruction of property and to a misdemeanor count of attempted possession of a high-capacity magazine (the felony counts were dropped as part of the agreement). Tarrio acknowledged that he had burned the banner, but denied that the act was a
hate crime. Tarrio was sentenced to 155 days in the
D.C. Jail, more than the 90 days requested by
federal prosecutors. Tarrio began serving his sentence on September 6, 2021. Tarrio was released from the D.C. jail in January 2022, after serving four months and a week. The
Metropolitan AME Church, one of the historically Black congregations attacked in December 2020, sued Tarrio and the Texas-based Proud Boys International LLC. Represented by the
Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the law firm
Paul Weiss, the church brought claims of
civil conspiracy, defacement of private property, trespass, and destruction of religious property under the D.C. Bias and Related Crimes Act. The Proud Boys failed to respond to the suit, and the plaintiffs won a
default judgment in April 2021. Kravitz wrote in his order that the four men had engaged in "hateful and overtly racist conduct" and that the tearing down of the sign "resulted from a highly orchestrated set of events focused on the Proud Boys' guiding principles: white supremacy and violence."
Role in the January 6 attack By November 2021, at least two dozen Proud Boys members and affiliates had been indicted for alleged roles in the
2021 United States Capitol attack. After the assault on the Capitol, Tarrio said he would neither "support" nor "condemn" the attack and did not "sympathize" with lawmakers. In February 2022, under subpoena, Tarrio gave a
deposition to committee investigators and two committee members. ==Split within Proud Boys after January 6==