Witness transcripts released by the Jan. 6 committee reveal Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio spoke at length to investigators about his role in the insurrection.
Tarrio, who is currently standing trial for sedition, told the committee that his militant group and the Oath Keepers had ill will toward one another due to a logistical miscalculation that left hundreds of Proud Boys stranded after a protest years earlier in Portland, Oregon, and that carried over to his uneasy Jan. 5 meeting with the group's leader, reported Rolling Stone.
“Ever since then, I did not talk to Stewart Rhodes -- I didn’t like Stewart Rhodes, I still don’t like Stewart Rhodes,” Tarrio told investigators, but he tried to be friendly when they met. “I didn’t want to be rude. I shook his hand.”
Tarrio and Rhodes, who was convicted last month of sedition, met the day before the insurrection in the parking garage of the Phoenix Park hotel, which was filmed by a documentary crew, but he said they only spoke long enough to greet one another, and he expressed disdain for the Oath Keepers and their ilk.
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“I’m being honest here,” he said. “A bunch of older White dudes in camouflage are hard to tell one from the other — like, I can’t tell them apart.”
Tarrio downplayed a December 2020 text from Oath Keeper Kelly Meggs, who was also convicted of sedition, of having “formed an alliance” with the Proud Boys.
“I get people that name-drop me all the time,” Tarrio told the committee. “But I can guarantee you that there was never any coordination between me or any Oath Keepers or Three Percenters.”
Members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys entered the Capitol within minutes of each other, but Tarrio insisted there was no coordination between the two groups.
“I mean, anybody that went into the Capitol within that time frame can be accused of working with the Oath Keepers," Tarrio told the committee. "We don’t have a history of working with the Oath Keepers.”
