Enrique Tarrio's two-decade jail sentence should make Trump sweat: legal expert

Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys militant group, was just given the longest sentence yet for the Jan. 6 riots, and MSNBC's Chuck Rosenberg explained how that might impact Donald Trump's prosecutions.

The former president has been charged by special counsel Jack Smith's office for his own role in the insurrection, and Rosenberg told "Morning Joe" that Tarrio's conviction and sentence was instructive because, like Trump, he wasn't present at the U.S. Capitol during the attack but his leadership role was factored into his trial and penalty.

"You have to look to the counts of conviction, right?" Rosenberg said. "You're not sentenced for other people's criminal conduct, you're sentenced for your own criminal conduct. So if Mr. Trump is tried and convicted, at sentencing the judge would look at what he had been convicted of and the federal sentencing guidelines that attend that count or those counts of conviction."

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"But I do think it's telling, right, [that] leaders, whether they're physically present or not, are treated differently, and you saw that with Mr. Tarrio," Rosenberg added. "So broadly speaking, you know, if Mr. Trump is the one that put all of this into motion, and arguably he did, and he's convicted for related conduct, although he hasn't been charged with seditious conspiracy, I imagine a federal judge at sentencing will look at what other people received in terms of punishment and that they will try to slot Mr. Trump in accordingly. But, again, each case on its own set of facts, each count of conviction with its own attendant federal sentencing guideline."

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