Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys and Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers asserted that they wanted President Trump to seek revenge on their behalf for being prosecuted in connection with the Jan. 6 riot.
Fresh from being freed by President Trump’s sweeping grants of clemency, two of the nation’s most notorious far-right leaders — Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys and Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers militia — spoke out this week.
While the men avoided any declarations about the future of their battered organizations, they asserted unrepentantly that they wanted Mr. Trump to seek revenge on their behalf for being prosecuted in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Before Mr. Trump offered them a reprieve on Monday night, both men had been serving lengthy prison terms — Mr. Tarrio 22 years and Mr. Rhodes 18 years — on seditious conspiracy convictions arising from the roles they played in the storming of the Capitol. The charges they faced and the punishment they got were among the most serious imposed against any of the nearly 1,600 people prosecuted in connection with Jan. 6.
Perhaps for that reason, their remarks, made to largely friendly audiences, were couched in a tone of cautious belligerence.
They were cagey about what sort of profile the organizations they once led would strike in a second Trump administration. But they clearly echoed assertions by the president and some of his allies that those who sought to hold Mr. Trump and the Jan. 6 rioters accountable should themselves face some sort of punishment.
“Success,” Mr. Tarrio said, “is going to be retribution.”
Mr. Tarrio made those comments to Alex Jones, the pro-Trump conspiracy theorist and proprietor of the news outlet Infowars. He called in to Mr. Jones’s show just hours after getting out of a federal prison in Louisiana and immediately thanked Mr. Trump “for helping us through these difficult times and releasing me.”