Crafty Proud Boy Leader Records His Own Witness, Umm, Management

Bet the feds appreciate that a lot.

Everyone's favorite Afro-Cuban white nationalist   Aladdin aficionado is back in the news this week with a hilarious scoop from Reuters about Proud Boy Enrique Tarrio. King Derp is currently cooling his heels in a DC jail serving a 155-day sentence for stealing a Black Lives Matter sign off a church on December 12 and coming into the District with an illegal high-capacity magazine. But over the summer, he was flapping his stupid yap to his buddies about presenting a united front against prosecutors seeking to flip Capitol Riot defendants against each other.

Thanks to his legal issues, Tarrio was barred from DC on January 6. But his face-licking Proud Boy pals were out in force, with defendants Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean, Charles Donohoe, and Zachary Rehl leading a crowd toward the Capitol, according to videotape presented by prosecutors. Which is how those four fine specimens wound up in the hoosegow in July, facing conspiracy charges.

Also in July, Zachary Rehl's lawyer filed a motion for continuance citing "ongoing conversations with Assistant United States Attorney Luke Jones regarding developments in this case."

"Question: What are the 'developments' that require 'ongoing conversations' with the government?" tweeted New York Times reporter Alan Feuer, who has been doing yeoman's work live-tweeting the Capitol Riot hearings.

Tarrio appears to have interpreted this as a suggestion that Rehl had flipped and was cooperating with the feds. So naturally he sprung into action, reaching out to Rehl's wife to find out whether her husband was still keeping his mouth shut. Which is fucking stupid , since the line between "Hey, just wondering if Zach flipped?" and "Hey, Zach better not flip!" is one you really don't want to step over .

But not as fucking stupid as what Tarrio did next, which was to fire off a voice memo to a bunch of his pals documenting the conversation with Mrs. Rehl:

Raising the possibility that one of the four leaders may have been cooperating with authorities, Tarrio told fellow Proud Boy leadership he didn't believe that the man was doing so – and said he had spoken about the matter directly with that leader's wife.

"The bigger problem with that is the guys that are in prison right now are holding on to hope that everybody is fucking staying put because they didn't do anything wrong," Tarrio said. "The moment that they think one of the guys flipped, it throws everything off and it makes everybody turn on each other, and that's what we are trying to fucking avoid."

You would think that someone who spent years as a government snitch would have better OPSEC. But you would be wrong!

One of Tarrio's trusted lieutenants immediately leaked the audio to reporters at Reuters, because LOL DUH. When contacted by those reporters, Tarrio assured them that there was no witness tampering whatsoever, and that he was just trying to calm the troops.

"What I was trying to avoid is them turning against each other because of media stories," he insisted.

At this point in the story, we must pause, and ask the reader what is the FUCKING STUPIDEST THING this doofus could have done next? We'll give you a minute to think about it.

.......

.......

Okay, pencils down.

Did you say, "get on the horn and fire off another incriminating voice text"? If so, please award yourself today's No Prize.

On August 27, the very day Reuters contacted him, Tarrio lost his shit, complaining to his compatriots that the original leak had put him in "felony territory."

"You know it's hard enough to fight a fucking entire government…," he bellyached, "to have to worry about dudes in here fucking putting you in felony territory. Not just regular felony, like a serious felony."

And he did it via voice memo, which was considerate since it saved his pal the trouble of having to record a phone tirade before sending it on to Reuters.

Please appreciate the understated beauty of this paragraph by reporter Aram Roston about confronting Tarrio with the second recording.

Tarrio told Reuters the reference to a "serious felony" was simply a reminder to members that they should not fight among themselves. He said there was no actual felony.

NO FELONY! NO FELONY! YOU ARE THE ACTUAL FELONY WHICH DOES NOT EXIST AND IS JUST A METAPHOR OR PERHAPS A SIMILE FOR INFIGHTING AMONG THESE PROUD PATRIOTS AMEN!

Aaaaaaaand scene.

[ Reuters ]

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