Enrique Tarrio, the Proud Boys leader otherwise famous for helping police with their inquiries, has pleaded guilty to burning a Black Lives Matter banner taken from a Black church in Washington, D.C., and to possessing a prohibited high-capacity magazine. CNN's Marshall Cohen:
He will be sentenced next month and could face up to one year in jail, though defendants rarely get the maximum penalty. The charges were filed in local DC court and are separate from the sprawling federal investigation into the January 6 Capitol insurrection — during which dozens of Proud Boys stormed the building and have since been charged with conspiracy and other crimes.
Tarrio took ostentatious credit for burning the banner — "I was the person that went ahead and put the lighter to it and engulfed it in flames, and I am damn proud that I did." — but sung a different tune for the judge.
"If I had known that the banner came from a church, it wouldn't have been burned," Tarrio told Judge Harold Cushenberry. "I would never consider doing anything to a church myself."
