New York
Enrique Tarrio, Pardoned by Trump, Helped Initiate Capitol Riot
By including Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, in his extraordinary pardons for the events of Jan. 6, 2021, President Trump granted clemency on Monday to a man whom prosecutors have described as a savvy, street-fighting extremist who helped his compatriots in “Trump’s army” initiate an assault on the Capitol.
Mr. Tarrio, 42, was serving a 22-year prison term after being convicted of seditious conspiracy and other felonies for his role in the Capitol attack. His was the longest sentence handed down against any of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with Jan. 6.
A representative for Mr. Tarrio said he had been released from a federal prison in Louisiana and was expected to return to Miami, his hometown, on Tuesday afternoon.
Even before Jan. 6, Mr. Tarrio was among the best-known far-right figures in the country, having been involved in violent protests going back to the deadly neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017. Rarely seen without his sunglasses and baseball cap, he took control of the Proud Boys the next year after the group’s founder, Gavin McInnes, stepped aside.
But Mr. Tarrio is arguably better known for the part he played in supporting Mr. Trump during the 2020 election — and in the chaotic months after he lost the race. The Proud Boys were thrust into the heart of that campaign two months before Election Day when Mr. Trump, at one of the presidential debates, called out the group by name, telling its members to “stand back and stand by.”
Mr. Tarrio responded immediately on social media, “Standing by, sir.”
In December of that year, Mr. Tarrio responded to a message that Mr. Trump himself posted on social media, summoning his supporters to Washington on Jan. 6 for what he said would be a “wild” protest. The day after, Mr. Tarrio established a crew of “hand-selected members” for the rally, court papers said, known within the Proud Boys as the Ministry of Self-Defense.
During the trial of Mr. Tarrio and four other Proud Boys, federal prosecutors described how the group under his control was “thirsting for violence and organizing for action” after Mr. Trump lost the election and ultimately fought at the Capitol “to keep their preferred leader in power no matter what the law or the courts had to say about it.”
Mr. Tarrio was not in Washington on Jan. 6. He had been kicked out of the city days earlier by a local judge presiding over separate criminal charges brought against him for vandalizing a Black church after an earlier pro-Trump rally. But prosecutors say that he and other members of his group frenetically exchanged text messages while the mob, with the Proud Boys in the lead, overran the Capitol.
Ultimately, video clips of the attack showed that the Proud Boys were instrumental in encouraging other rioters to confront the police or in confronting officers themselves. Members of the group took part in several breaches of police lines and were at the forefront of violence almost the entire day.
When he was sentenced in Federal District Court in Washington, Mr. Tarrio sought to portray himself as humbled by the events of Jan. 6, apologizing for his role in the riot and calling it a “national embarrassment.”
“I am not a political zealot,” he said.
A few months before he went on trial, he met secretly with federal prosecutors who, by his own account, offered him leniency if he could corroborate their theory that he had been in touch with Mr. Trump in the run-up to Jan. 6 through at least three intermediaries.
Mr. Tarrio said he told the prosecutors they were wrong — a position that, regardless of its veracity, would have surely pleased Mr. Trump when it was made public.
It remains unclear what Mr. Tarrio’s release might mean for the future of the Proud Boys. He is a polarizing figure in the group, beloved by some members and despised and distrusted by others, including many from Miami, his hometown.
Moreover, the organization dismantled its national leadership and largely retreated from high-profile demonstrations after Jan. 6, which led to the arrest and prosecution of dozens of its members. While some chapters of the Proud Boys used violent language on their online accounts during the 2024 campaign, the group was barely present on the street or at rallies in support of Mr. Trump.
New York
Driver Who Killed Mother and Daughters Sentenced to 3 to 9 Years
A driver who crashed into a woman and her two young daughters while they were crossing a street in Brooklyn in March, killing all three, was sentenced to as many as nine years in prison on Wednesday.
The driver, Miriam Yarimi, has admitted striking the woman, Natasha Saada, 34, and her daughters, Diana, 8, and Deborah, 5, after speeding through a red light. She had slammed into another vehicle on the border of the Gravesend and Midwood neighborhoods and careened into a crosswalk where the family was walking.
Ms. Yarimi, 33, accepted a judge’s offer last month to admit to three counts of second-degree manslaughter in Brooklyn Supreme Court in return for a lighter sentence. She was sentenced on Wednesday by the judge, Justice Danny Chun, to three to nine years behind bars.
The case against Ms. Yarimi, a wig maker with a robust social media presence, became a flashpoint among transportation activists. Ms. Yarimi, who drove a blue Audi A3 sedan with the license plate WIGM8KER, had a long history of driving infractions, according to New York City records, with more than $12,000 in traffic violation fines tied to her vehicle at the time of the crash.
The deaths of Ms. Saada and her daughters set off a wave of outrage in the city over unchecked reckless driving and prompted calls from transportation groups for lawmakers to pass penalties on so-called super speeders.
Ms. Yarimi “cared about only herself when she raced in the streets of Brooklyn and wiped away nearly an entire family,” Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney, said in a statement after the sentencing. “She should not have been driving a car that day.”
Mr. Gonzalez had recommended the maximum sentence of five to 15 years in prison.
On Wednesday, Ms. Yarimi appeared inside the Brooklyn courtroom wearing a gray shirt and leggings, with her hands handcuffed behind her back. During the brief proceedings, she addressed the court, reading from a piece of paper.
“I’ll have to deal with this for the rest of my life and I think that’s a punishment in itself,” she said, her eyes full of tears. “I think about the victims every day. There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t think about what I’ve done.”
On the afternoon of March 29, a Saturday, Ms. Yarimi was driving with a suspended license, according to prosecutors. Around 1 p.m., she turned onto Ocean Parkway, where surveillance video shows her using her cellphone and running a red light, before continuing north, they said.
At the intersection with Quentin Road, Ms. Saada was stepping into the crosswalk with her two daughters and 4-year-old son. Nearby, a Toyota Camry was waiting to turn onto the parkway.
Ms. Yarimi sped through a red light and into the intersection. She barreled into the back of the Toyota and then shot forward, plowing into the Saada family. Her car flipped over and came to a rest about 130 feet from the carnage.
Ms. Saada and her daughters were killed, while her son was taken to a hospital where he had a kidney removed and was treated for skull fractures and brain bleeding. The Toyota’s five passengers — an Uber driver, a mother and her three children — also suffered minor injuries.
Ms. Yarimi’s car had been traveling 68 miles per hour in a 25 m.p.h. zone and showed no sign that brakes had been applied, prosecutors said. Ms. Yarimi sustained minor injures from the crash and was later taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation.
The episode caused immediate fury, drawing reactions from Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and Mayor Eric Adams, who attended the Saadas’s funeral.
According to NYCServ, the city’s database for unpaid tickets, Ms. Yarimi’s Audi had $1,345 in unpaid fines at the time of the crash. On another website that tracks traffic violations using city data, the car received 107 parking and camera violations between June 2023 and the end of March 2025. Those violations, which included running red lights and speeding through school zones, amounted to more than $12,000 in fines.
In the months that followed, transportation safety groups and activists decried Ms. Yarimi’s traffic record and urged lawmakers in Albany to pass legislation to address the city’s chronic speeders.
Mr. Gonzalez on Wednesday said that Ms. Yarimi’s sentence showed “that reckless driving will be vigorously prosecuted.”
But outside the courthouse, the Saada family’s civil lawyer, Herschel Kulefsky, complained that the family had not been allowed to speak in court. “ They are quite disappointed, or outraged would probably be a better word,” he said, calling the sentence “the bare minimum.”
“I think this doesn’t send any message at all, other than a lenient message,” Mr. Kulefsky added.
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