Federal prosecutors are not bringing charges against former Proud Boys national chair Enrique Tarrio after his arrest in February in connection with a scuffle with a female protester at the Capitol, court system records are indicating.
Tarrio said Wednesday that a U.S. attorney's office representative has told him he won't be charged, and no criminal case has shown up in the court system after U.S. Capitol Police arrested him on Feb. 21, reports The Washington Post.
Typically, when a criminal case does not show up in the court's system, that indicates prosecutors aren't moving forward with charges, the publication further noted.
"I would have loved to defend myself in court if they would have kept these charges up. But obviously, I'm happy that I won't have to go through it," Tarrio commented. "If somebody harasses you and touches you and grabs you the way that she did to me, then I shouldn't have even been arrested."
The U.S. attorney's office declined to comment on the case.
After Tarrio was arrested, a police spokesman said that officers saw the exchange between Tarrio and the protesters.
"The woman told our officers that she wanted to be a complainant, and the man was arrested for the simple assault," Capitol Police spokesman Tim Barber said after Tarrio's arrest.
Tarrio, along with most defendants from the Jan. 6, 2021, protests at the U.S. Capitol, was pardoned by President Donald Trump in January after he had been sentenced in 2023 to 22 years in prison and 36 months of supervised release for several charges, including seditious conspiracy, in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, events at the Capitol.
Tarrio was arrested the next month while he was in Washington, D.C., to meet up with other Proud Boys for the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Tarrio, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, and other Proud Boys members were speaking with reporters when he and a female protester got into a scuffle, and she said she wanted to press charges against him.
A person familiar with the decision not to charge Tarrio said prosecutors in the case determined that there was not enough evidence to win a conviction, as Tarrio claimed self-defense in the incident.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.