The FBI is probing a meeting between Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio that sources say was held in the parking garage of the Phoenix Park hotel on January 5th, 2021, the day before the Capitol riot, Reuters reports. Tarrio, who had been arrested the prior day on vandalism charges after he had torched a Black Lives Matter banner outside of a DC church during a melee in the streets of the capital in December 2020, did not participate the Capitol riot as he had been ordered to leave the city immediately following his arrest.
Also present were Bianca Gracia, leader of Latinos for Trump, and Kellye SoRelle, a lawyer for the Oath Keepers (and now their acting president following Rhodes’s arrest on seditious conspiracy charges last month) who on January 18th, 2021 filed a completely insane civil complaint against Mark Zuckerberg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (among many others) asking a federal judge to dissolve the entire 117th Congress and void the 2020 election. Latinos for Trump were the plaintiffs.
Tarrio told Reuters in June that it was a chance encounter and he merely shook hands with Rhodes as he was leaving the hotel following his release from jail after spending the night locked up on the vandalism charge. When asked again last month, Tarrio refused to go into further detail and said he’d stepped down as Proud Boys leader (and who knows how true that is, seeing as how he’s already supposedly been expelled and still remains affiliated). Gracia and Tarrio were previously connected as Tarrio had been the Florida state director for Latinos for Trump, but per SoRelle who was accompanying Gracia, the nature of the meeting was confusing, as Rhodes had been critical of the Proud Boys. “Why would you meet Enrique in a fucking parking garage?” said Oath Keeper Michael Simmons when informed of the meeting by a Reuters reporter. “It just blows my mind.”
A documentary film crew called “Saboteur Media” were following Tarrio around prior to his departure from DC and took photographs and footage of the meeting, both of which are now in the FBI’s possession. What this means for the investigation is unclear, however even a chance encounter between two violent MAGA terrorist leaders could have meant an exchange of operational planning relevant to the seditious conspiracy charges the Oath Keepers leadership now faces, possibly now ensnaring the Proud Boys too. This is also not the first reporting of possible cooperation between the two organizations planning the insurrection.