The leader of the far-right white supremacist group the Proud Boys, who former President Donald Trump once called on to “stand back and stand by,” was sentenced on Monday to five months in jail after pleading guilty to burning a Black Lives Matter flag stolen from a historic Black church in Washington, D.C.

Henry “Enrique” Tarrio was not charged with stealing the banner from Asbury United Methodist Church, a crime authorities attributed to “unidentified members” of the Proud Boys, The Washington Post reported. He claimed when he pleaded guilty to burning the banner and attempting to possess a high-capacity ammunition magazine last month, he didn’t know the banner came from a church. Tarrio said if he had “known that the banner came from a church, it would not have been burned.”

He told Judge Harold Cushenberry he had made “a grave mistake,” adding that he has “heard the grief” in the voice of the church’s senior pastor. “I’d like to profusely apologize for my actions,” Tarrio said. It was a far cry a statement he made last December on The War Boys, a Proud Boys’ podcast. “In the burning of the BLM sign, I was the one who lit it on fire,” he said. “I was the person that went ahead and put a lighter to it and engulfed it in flames. And I am damn proud that I did.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul V. Courtney seemed to interpret Tarrio’s recent response to the crimes as a dodging of responsibility. “Mr. Tarrio does not seem to have yet fully accepted responsibility,” Courtney said in court on Monday. “Now he denies knowing that the banner came from a church at all, even though there is video that shows him standing on the church’s lawn … at the time other members of the Proud Boys were stealing and marching with the banner.”

Rev. Ianther Mills, senior pastor of the church, detailed in a victim impact statement the Post obtained the “emotional and psychological impact” of the incident on the church’s “aging congregation, many of whom, if not part of it themselves, are direct descendants of individuals who traveled north during the Great Migration.” The period between the mid- and late-1900s is characterized by the millions of Black people who fled the South in search of better job prospects and more humane treatment in the northern states.

“They migrated here in search of opportunity, but also to escape the stress, fear and anxiety of terror, including acts of social and racial injustice,” Mills wrote. “Imagine, if you please, a marauding band of seemingly angry white men moving about the city, apparently looking for trouble.

“Now imagine the images conjured up in the minds of Asbury’s congregants as a result of these white men burning the BLM banner: visions of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, cross burnings …”

Prosecutors said in a news release:

           The group then walked southbound on 11th Street NW and took the banner to the intersection of 11th and E Streets NW. At the intersection, the group burned the banner, using lighter fluid and lighters. Numerous unidentified individuals crouched down and applied lighters to the edges of the banner. Tarrio posted a picture to his “Parler” social media account depicting himself holding an unlit lighter, inches from the ignited lighters in two other individuals’ hands.

           In the days that followed, Tarrio admitted to burning the banner on social media and in comments to numerous media outlets.

           Tarrio returned to the District of Columbia from Florida on Jan. 4, 2021, and he was arrested on a warrant charging him with the Dec. 12, 2020, destruction of property offense. In a search of his book bag, conducted at the time of his arrest, police recovered two high-capacity firearm magazines. Each magazine bars the insignia of the “Proud Boys.” In an interview with police, Tarrio told detectives that he had intended to transfer the magazines to a customer who was also going to be present in the District of Columbia.”

Tarrio’s sentence was broken down to 90 days for the destruction of property charge and 150 days for the ammunition-related offense. The judge suspended all except 155 days of that time on the condition that Tarrio remain on probation for three years and pay $1,000 in fines and $347 in restitution to the church, the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the District of Columbia said in the release. Tarrio is set to start serving his sentence two weeks from this Monday.

As part of a congressional committee’s investigation into the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, Tarrio has also been named in a request for communications related to the 2020 election.

Trump called for his supporters to march to the Capitol to block Congress from certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory at a “Save America” rally on Jan. 6. What followed was an attempted coup that sent an angry mob storming the legislature on the day election results were slated to be certified. The FBI has already linked Tarrio to the riot, also having arrested him before the Capitol attack to prevent violence, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported in January.

Steven D’Antuono, assistant director of the FBI Field Office in Washington, said during a news conference the Sun-Sentinel covered that the FBI “developed some intelligence that a number of individuals were planning to travel to the D.C. area with intentions to cause violence.” 

”We immediately shared that information and action was taken, as demonstrated by the arrest of Enrique Tarrio by the Metropolitan Police Department the night before the rally,” D’Antuono said. 

Tarrio said of the FBI at the time that “what they’re trying to do is save face for their inadequacies.” “They didn’t do anything to stop this.” He claimed taking him off the street “has nothing to do with the events of Jan. 6.”

That much, however, is not for him to decide. Congress will look into exactly how much involvement Tarrio had in the riot. 

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