Court documents show the leader of the Pride Boys, arrested shortly before the Capitol riots in Washington, previously worked undercover and cooperated with investigators after he was charged with fraud in 2012, court documents show.
Records show that Henry “Enrique” Tario helped law enforcement in various investigations about a decade ago by providing information and hiding.
The Boys of Pride is a right-wing, male-key extremist group that took over the policies of the Trump administration and was a major agitator during previous protests and during the Capitol riots in January. The overthrow of the current government system, and therefore the revelation of Tario as a federal informant, came as a surprise.
Details of Tario’s involvement in a transcript of a 2014 federal court hearing in Florida about his sentence for participating in a plan to resell diabetic test strips were first reported by Reuters on Wednesday.
Both the plaintiff and Terio’s defense attorney cited Terio’s extensive collaboration in the argument that his 30-month sentence should be commuted. Records show that the judge agreed to reduce his sentence to 16 months.
“Your Honor, obviously, in all these years, what I’ve been doing is now over 300, I have never had a client consume anything in terms of co-operation,” said Terio’s lawyer. Jeffrey Feller according to the transcript.
The email seeking comment was not immediately returned by the lawyer representing Terio in his current case. In an interview with Reuters, Terio refused to cooperate with officials.
After Terio’s 2012 indictment, he helped the government prosecute more than a dozen people, the federal prosecutor told the judge, according to the transcript. Terio’s lawyer said he was the first defendant to co-operate in the case and was also involved in various police undercover operations involving matters such as anabolic steroids and prescription drugs.
“From day one, he was the one who wanted to talk to law enforcement, to clarify his name, to make it straight so that he could move on with his life. And he has in fact cooperated significantly, ”the plaintiff said, according to the transcript.
Tario was arrested in Washington On January 4, two days before the pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol to overthrow President J. Biden.
Accused of sabotaging the banner of Black Lives Matter at the historic historic Black Church during an earlier protest in the nation’s capital. In December, a banner was torn down and torn from the property of the Eberry United Methodist Church.
A video of the incident, posted on YouTube, showed Terio with the sign, the police report said. When police pulled the Terio, officers found two unloaded magazines in their bags filled with the minor boys’ logos, each with a capacity of one round.
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Richter reported from Boston. Kurt Anderson, a reporter for the Associated Press in St. Petersburg, Florida, contributed to this report.
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