Proud Boys: So…What About Gavin?

This clown founded the organization whose members are in jail on assault and seditious conspiracy convictions in its name. Why does he keep getting a pass?

When Henry “Enrique” Tarrio walked into the courtroom on Sept. 5, the day of his sentencing, it was particularly curious how much lighter he was as opposed to when he was on the street leading Proud Boys into various rallies and fights and palling around with right-wing politicians. The former head of the neo-fascist Proud Boys has always identified as an Afro-Cuban and the Proud Boys would often deflect charges of being a White Supremacist group by noting the heritage Tarrio claimed. Yet, here he was missing much of the “Afro” of his claimed Afro-Cuban heritage. Even the women in his family who came to plead to Judge Timothy Kelly for leniency were White women. Of course, it doesn’t help that the Bureau of Prisons lists Tarrio’s race as “White,” just as they did in 2013 when he served time on federal fraud charges related to a scheme to sell stolen diabetic test strips.

If all this time Henry Tarrio – as his mother insisted in her testimony he should be called – was maintaining this particular façade, it was one of many that were lifted as he was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison. It was an end of two weeks of sentencing for the him and four other Proud Boys – other Proud Boys, Joseph Biggs, Dominic Pezzola, Zach Rehl and Ethan Nordean – who were convicted of Seditious Conspiracy for their role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. At least it was until prosecutors announced last week that they were appealing their sentencings because what each received was significantly shorter than what prosecutors had recommended. News of that came on the same day that Proud Boy William Chrestman, 49, of Olathe, Kansas pleaded guilty to threatening to assault a federal officer during the insurrection. When he is sentenced on Jan. 12, he is looking at a sentence of up to just over five years in prison. Earlier this month, Vancouver, Washington Proud Boy Marc Anthony Bru was convicted of charges also stemming from his role during the insurrection. A so-called sovereign citizen who said in court that he did not consent to a trial, Bru will regardless be sentenced on Jan. 8.

Then there was the matter of Proud Boy fugitive Christopher Worrell. On Sept. 28, he was found unconscious by federal agents after he tried to “covertly return” to his home, according to the FBI. Two weeks before Tarrio and the others were sentenced, Worrell, who unlike his comrades that were incarcerated was under house arrest after being found guilty of spraying pepper spray gel on police officers that day, was due to be sentenced himself, prosecutors asking for 14 years. Days before that sentencing however, Christopher Worrell, 52, slipped away, a bench warrant was then issued and he was on the run for just over a month.

It is not been explained publicly why Worrell was unconscious or what current medical condition is with the exception that he has been suffering from stage three non-Hodgkins lymphoma cancer. Meanwhile, as medical attention was being given to him, authorities found night-vision goggles, survivalist gear and $4,000 in cash in his home. Worrell is now scheduled to be sentenced possibly next month he is expected to get an even greater sentence than the 14 years he originally could have received.

Worrell’s recapture ends a miserable summer for the neo-fascist Proud Boys, who have seen their efforts to be the street thugs for the right turn into disarray after the arrests of many of its top leaders. Curiously however, one of those reputed leaders seems to be emerging from their ordeal unscathed: Proud Boy founder Gavin McInnes. As his Proud Boys hunkered down to serve long prison sentences, he was part of an event with neo-fascist troll Alex Stein at Penn State University on Monday, about one year after an event he and Stein organized on this campus was shut down after protests escalated into violence, allegedly after two members of the New Jersey chapter of White Lives Matter (WLM) began to pepper spray the protesters. Curiously, the two identified, Claudino G. Petruccelli and Nicholas G. Mucci have their run-ins with the law, Petruccelli for attempting to post WLM stickers on posts in Somerville, NJ, a year before the Penn State event, and Mucci three months later when he attempted to smoke bomb and pepper spray a benefit show for One People’s Project. Currently in jail awaiting trial for that, it was determined that Mucci purchased the smoke bombs the day before the Penn State event in a Pennsylvania fireworks store.

In the wake of the recent sentencings of Tarrio and the other Proud Boys in August, McInnis interviewed all of them for his podcast while they awaited relocation to the prison where they will serve out their sentences. It indicates just how much of a relationship he still has with the group despite his apparent resignation from the group five years ago. He has maintained a role of being their biggest cheerleader, despite them and the scores of other Proud Boys that are currently incarcerated for various crimes over its seven-year existence ranging from assault to murder. He also still seems to maintain an apparent shot caller. His 2018 “resignation” was actually a move made to make cases easier for those members that were facing assault charges stemming from a brawl that took place outside one of his speaking engagements in New York City. All were eventually convicted with McInnes making public announcements of his support for them.

McInnes has appeared at events and meetings in the past five years and was the one who last year expelled from the Proud Boys Brien James, the founder of the white supremacist Vinlander Social Club and the neo-fascist American Guard, declaring that any Proud Boys chapter that harbored him and another associated with James who shared the same fate would similarly face expulsion. Even if Proud Boys are not physically in a room with McInnes at public events, they regularly make their presence known somewhere nearby, as was the case at Penn State last year where Proud Boys were involved in fights alongside the White Lives Matter members with protesters outside.

McInnes has mended fences with Tarrio who was on the other side of a split between Proud Boy chapters, largely generated from news of Tarrio being a onetime FBI informant well before the Proud Boys were founded. “Enrique and I have had our ups and downs…It’s sorta like when Joe (Biggs) went, I was like, ‘Fuck Joe, why did you go?’” he said in the introduction to Tarrio’s interview with him on McInnes’ podcast, saying he felt all those who were charged should simply pay a $200 fine and possibly a day in jail. “And then they get 22 years then you go, ‘Okay, now I’m on your side, because that’s a little more than I think you deserve. So now I’m cool with Enrique.”

Three years ago, before the events of Jan. 6 and even the 2020 election itself,  a little known petition appeared on change.org calling for McInnes, a Canadian national, to be deported from the United States saying, “America does not need foreigners sowing hate and fear. Gavin McGinnis has already been banned from social media for his hate speech, and inciting violence with his organization the Proud Boys.” One of the signers of the petition agreed with this sentiment. “This is something the Founders feared – a foreigner fomenting violence and rebellion” Ace Annese wrote. “This person should be deported for his many crimes.”

The Lincoln Project also weighed in that year with calls to deport McInnes. They however went so far as to tweeting a video they produced depicting the Proud Boys’ various acts of violence with McInnes saying flat out about his group, “We will kill you!” The tweet came with a question: “Thought of the day: if Gavin McInnes was named Ahmad, how soon would he be deported?”

Indeed, there could be a precedence as the street gang Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13, was founded in Los Angeles in the eighties, its founders were from El Salvador. Those founders were eventually deported as the gang’s criminal activity became more and more widespread. There is also the matter of the Proud Boys being designated as a terrorist organization in Canada almost a month after the Jan. 6 insurrection they helped to create. “Violent acts of terrorism have no place in Canadian society or abroad,” Canada then-Public Safety Minister, now Minister of National Defence Bill Blair said in a statement at the time. “Canadians expect their government to keep them safe and to keep pace with evolving threats and global trends, such as the growing threat of ideologically motivated violent extremism.”

The U.S. Department of Justice did not respond to emails concerning McInnes and his status and it remains to be seen if he will indeed see the same kind of scrutiny that his incarcerated Proud Boys have seen over the past several years. If voices continue to be raised concerning this question however, there might soon be an answer.