Proud Boys leader says prosecutors tried to 'coerce' him into burying Trump: report

Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio said prosecutors tried to get him to incriminate Donald Trump as they dangled a plea deal for his part in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, The Washington Post reports.

Prosecutors tried to draw connections between associates of Tarrio's and Trump, all of which Tarrio denied, and the alleged connections never made it into Tarrio's trial.

“They weren’t trying to get the truth,” Tarrio said. “They were trying to coerce me into signing something that’s not true.”

Tarrio and three other former Proud Boys were ultimately convicted of not only seditious conspiracy but also obstructing an official proceeding. Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison.

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Tarrio told The Post that he should not have been named what one judge called "the tip of the spear" of the riot, and said he thought events of that day were "terrible." He was also not in D.C. on Jan. 6.

“I don’t know what instructions I would give somebody at that point ... I’m not speaking. I have no function. So there was no communication," he said. On the social media platform Parler during the riot, he wrote, “Don’t f---ing leave” while the Proud Boys were inside the Capitol.

As The Post points out, his activity on social media during and leading up to the riot played a huge role in his conviction.

Read the full report over at The Washington Post.