Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio asks Trump for pardon
Eva Marie Uzcategui Trinkl/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The former leader of the Proud Boys — a group prosecutors say was central to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — is asking President-elect Donald Trump for a pardon, according to a letter from his lawyer on Monday.
Enrique Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years behind bars for his role in helping rally members of the far-right group to come to Washington in advance of Jan. 6, prosecutors say, with the goal of stopping the peaceful transition of power, that he monitored their movements and egged them on as they attacked the Capitol, and continued to celebrate their actions in the days after the insurrection.
“Henry ‘Enrique’ Tarrio was portrayed throughout the government’s case as a right-wing extremist that promoted a neo-fascist militant organization,” Tarrio’s lawyer, Nayib Hassan writes in a letter obtained by ABC News. “Henry is nothing more than a proud American that believes in true conservative values.”
His lawyer writes that Tarrio is a “young man” with an “aspiring future” and that he wasn’t even in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6.
During his sentencing, prosecutors pointed to a nine-page strategic plan to “storm” government buildings in Washington on Jan. 6 that was found in Tarrio’s possession after the riot, as well as violent rhetoric they say he routinely used in messages with other members of the group about what they would do if Congress moved forward in certifying President Joe Biden’s election win.
Tarrio, his lawyer argues, has been moved from various private and federal prisons and is often remanded to the Special Housing Unit which only allows someone to leave their cell once a day.
“Granting this pardon would allow Henry to reintegrate into a family that is extremely supportive and would further demonstrate commitment to lawful, peaceful and constructive contributions,” according to the letter. “It would also enable him to support his family fully and contribute meaningfully to the community.”
During his sentencing hearing in September 2023, Tarrio apologized profusely for his actions and heaping praise on members of law enforcement who he said have been unfairly mistreated and maligned after the Jan. 6 attack — which he called a “national embarrassment.”
“I will have to live with that shame and disappointment for the rest of my life,” Tarrio said. “We invoked 1776 and the Constitution of the United States and that was so wrong to do. That was a perversion. The events of Jan. 6 is something that should never be celebrated.”
(NEW YORK) — The contentious debate surrounding New York City’s struggle to address homelessness and mental illness has clouded the memory of who Jordan Neely was.
But to some who cared for him, Neely is remembered for breaking out into dance and singing along with the hits on the radio as a joyous child.
He’s remembered as a teen who struggled to cope with the loss of his best friend — his mother — who was violently murdered.
He’s remembered for entertaining commuters, tourists, and locals alike with moonwalks and side glides that rivaled Michael Jackson on the NYC subways.
Neely’s family had imagined a great future ahead for him: “I said, ‘Jordan, one day you might be famous,” Neely’s great aunt Mildred Mahazu told ABC News. “And he said, ‘Really, Aunt Mildred?'”
But by the age of 30, Neely was homeless and appeared to be experiencing a mental illness crisis when he was killed after a subway passenger named Daniel Penny held him in a six-minute-long chokehold, officials said.
Penny, a former Marine, was charged with second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in Neely’s death. He pleaded not guilty, arguing that Neely had been threatening to passengers on the train. Other witnesses reportedly told police that Neely had been yelling and harassing passengers. Penny’s trial begins on Oct. 21 with jury selection.
Neely’s death sparked citywide protests, demanding answers about city resources after reports showed dozens of interactions between Neely and both police and homeless services in the years leading up to his death.
Two of Neely’s loved ones reflected on the life and death in interviews with ABC News ahead of Penny’s trial.
Neely’s life
Neely’s childhood was rocky, according to Mahazu. He and his mother, Christie Neely, were housing insecure — sometimes living in homeless shelters — and his mother’s tumultuous relationship with her boyfriend filled some days with arguments. But amid the instability, Neely’s relationship with his mother blossomed.
The two were inseparable. Everywhere Christie went, Neely followed: “You see one, you see the other,” Mahazu said.
Before heading off to school each morning, Neely would knock at his mother’s door, wake her up and tell her goodbye.
On April 3, 2007, then-14-year-old Neely tried to go about his routine and say goodbye to his mother before school, but her boyfriend, Shawn Southerland, had blocked him from entering their bedroom, according to local news outlet NJ.com.
It was later discovered that Christie had been violently murdered at the hands of now-convicted-murderer Southerland and he dumped her body in a suitcase on a Bronx parkway, according to local reports.
Mahazu believes the tragedy changed the trajectory of Neely’s life. He was a teen, heartbroken and unable to grasp the loss.
Mahazu said she would catch Neely sitting with a far-off look in his eye, sometimes rocking side to side. She’d ask him what was wrong and recalled him once saying, “I miss my mama. I want my mama.”
“They loved each other dearly. They were crazy about each other,” Mahazu said. “From there on, he started going down, down, down, because he and his mother were extremely close, very close,” Mahazu said.
In the years after her death, Neely found solace in his love of dancing and made the NYC MTA subway system his stage, busking for money as a Michael Jackson impersonator.
New Yorker Moses Harper first remembers meeting Neely in August 2009, when she followed the sound of Michael Jackson’s greatest hits in the halls of the Times Square subway station.
Harper, a Michael Jackson tribute artist herself, remembers finding Neely mid-performance, surrounded by a crowd of tourists clapping to the rhythm and following Neely’s encouragement to dance alongside him.
Neely spotted and called on Harper, who was watching from the back of the crowd: “Show me something. Come on. Don’t be scared,” Harper recalls that he yelled out to her. Armed with a single glove in her back pocket on her way home from her dance studio, she surprised Neely with Jackson moves of her own.
“When it was all over, I gave him his hat back and he hugged me. He’s like, ‘You got to teach me, you got to show me.’ And I did,” said Harper.
It was the beginning of a friendship that would last years: “We wouldn’t just talk about Michael Jackson and dancing. We talked about other things, you know, and I missed that. I missed that. That was my little brother.”
She remembers when Neely first told her about his mother: “What was the one person in the world that really got him. And I had never seen him that sad.”
During those years, it was hard for Mahazu to keep track of him riding through the subway system. But he’d come and visit her often, and she’d fix up a big country dinner, and they’d sit and talk over their meal.
Homelessness and mental illness in New York One day, when Harper was riding the D train into the Bronx, she spotted Neely walking through the train cars. She recalled him looking noticeably homeless and asking for food or money.
She said his face lit up when he saw her, but he kept walking past, which Harper speculates was because of embarrassment. Harper said she stopped him, escorted him off the train, hugged him and asked him what was going on.
She bought him Chinese food, and something to drink, gave him cash and one of the shirts she had layered on.
“I said, ‘Listen to me: When you’re ready to get clean, this is where I am. Come and see me. I want you to come see me,'” she said. “It wasn’t what he needed at the time. And it just wasn’t. It just wasn’t enough. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
A community of Michael Jackson fans and tribute artists in NYC continued to search for Neely over the years after he stopped arriving at events and meetups. But local health officials and law enforcement said they knew him well.
According to police sources, Neely had a documented mental health history and had been previously arrested for several incidents, including assault, disorderly conduct and fare evasion.
The New York Times reported that Neely was on a list of the top 50 sheltered or homeless “high need individuals” to be reached by NYC outreach workers at the time of his death. According to New York Magazine, he bounced around shelters that have been criticized for their poor conditions and had also been hospitalized several times.
The Department of Social Services, the New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene and the NYPD declined to comment further on Neely’s case and why the efforts to contact or address Neely’s needs did not work.
Those who knew Neely have demanded answers.
“If you had had the background that Jordan nearly had, how would you fare in life? Where would you be? Where would your mental state be if you had the same kind of struggles that he had?” Harper said. “How would you be doing right now? Do you think that you would deserve the same? The same treatment that he received on the last day of his life? “
The Adams administration criticized “the system” Jordan went through: “That was a real textbook case of how if you ignore the problem over and over and over again, it could turn out to be a tragic outcome.”
Adams condemned Neely’s killing in the days following the death: “Jordan Neely did not deserve to die,” Adams said in prepared remarks amid growing calls for Penny’s arrest. He was not immediately arrested following Neely’s death.
“Jordan Neely’s life mattered. He was suffering from severe mental illness, but that was not the cause of his death. His death is a tragedy that never should have happened,” the mayor said, referring to Neely as “a Black man like me.”
In recent years, homelessness in New York City has reached the highest levels since the Great Depression, according to city officials.
Neely’s death took place following an announcement from New York City Mayor Eric Adams that individuals who appear “to be mentally ill” and “a danger to themselves” may be taken into custody involuntarily for psychiatric evaluations if they may be of harm, even if they are not considered to be an imminent threat to the public. The city has yet to release data about the outcomes of these programs and their effectiveness.
However, in a recent Department of Homeless Services announcement, city officials say 7,800 New Yorkers have been connected to shelter and 640 of them have been connected to permanent affordable housing since the city began an intensified approach to homelessness.
“They failed Jordan, they fail so many of the vulnerable members of a vulnerable population,” said Harper, calling for systemic reforms to fix the criminal justice and health care systems.
As Luigi Mangione pleaded not guilty to murder charges in Manhattan Criminal Court this morning, protesters from all walks of life assembled outside the courthouse to show their support for the alleged killer.
While their reasons to bear the 11-degree weather varied — including personal healthcare issues, concerns about inequality and distrust of the media — they were seemingly united in their support for the 26-year-old whose alleged actions have ignited a nationwide conversation about healthcare.
Pushing her 1-year-old son, Emmanuel, in a stroller, 37-year-old Alicia Thomas from the South Bronx said her experience giving birth while on Medicaid helped her relate to Mangione’s grievances with the healthcare industry. Suffering from a postpartum hemorrhage, she said she wanted to spend more than two days in the hospital after giving birth but couldn’t afford care beyond what Medicaid provided.
Thomas said she believes Mangione is innocent — framing him as a victim of the healthcare industry and justice system — but said his case has brought light to the need to improve healthcare.
“It sparked a catalyst to think about what kind of world we are going to leave our children,” she said, showing a Justo Juez prayer candle she plans to light for Mangione. “Our generation has seen so much devastation throughout the years, and our children are going to suffer at the hands of corporate greed.”
Prosecutors allege that Mangione meticulously planned and carried out the murder of Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel on the morning of Dec. 4 before fleeing the state to Pennsylvania, where he was arrested days later at a McDonald’s. According to the federal complaint, Mangione was in possession of a notebook in which he expressed hostility to healthcare executives, described the insurance industry as his target because it “checks every box,” and laid out his intent to “whack” Thompson at UnitedHealthcare’s investors conference.
While Mangione did not have family in court on Monday, about two dozen women attended the arraignment in the public section of the gallery, many of them voicing support for Mangione.
“This is a grave injustice, and that’s why people are here,” one of the women, who said she arrived at the courthouse at 5 a.m., told ABC News.
Outside court, protestors rallied for Mangione, chanting “Eat the rich,” “Hey, hey, ho, ho, these CEOs have got to go,” and “Free, free Luigi.”
Nicholas Zamudio, 33, said he came to the protest after spending over $100,000 out of pocket for his treatment after an electric injury in 2021. Holding a sign that read “United States Healthcare Stole My Livelihood. Prosecute Malicious Profiteers,” Zamudio said he doesn’t know if he will be able to afford his ongoing treatment for nerve damage.
“I don’t have insurance, I’ve drained my 401K. I’ve drained everything that I have, and come January I will be trying to keep a roof over my head by couch hopping amongst friends. I’ve lost everything and that’s what brought me out here,” he said.
Zamudio said he found comfort in Mangione’s writings about his spinal injury, noting they both received similar spinal fusion operations.
“He talked about not being able to sleep, laying in pain, things like that,” he said. “I guess a lot kind of resonated with me in regards to the pain and not getting help with the healthcare system. I think murder is obviously wrong, but it did bring us to a point we needed to get to.”
Law enforcement has raised concerns about the outpouring of support for Mangione and hostility towards healthcare industry since Thompson’s killing, with multiple police bulletins warning about the increased risk to healthcare executives. UnitedHealth Group’s CEO Andrew Witty appeared to acknowledge the public sentiment, writing in an opinion essay in the New York Times earlier this month that he “understand people’s frustrations” with healthcare and vowed to “to find ways to deliver high-quality care and lower costs.”
“[W]e also are struggling to make sense of this unconscionable act and the vitriol that has been directed at our colleagues who have been barraged by threats. No employees — be they the people who answer customer calls or nurses who visit patients in their homes — should have to fear for their and their loved ones’ safety,” Witty wrote.
While the specifics of Mangione’s grievances with the healthcare injury remain unclear — and we do not know if his personal issues with the healthcare system motivated his alleged actions — many of the protesters came to their own conclusions about what motivated the alleged killer.
A 26-year-old woman from Queens who preferred to go unnamed said she related to Mangione after she fell off her parent’s healthcare plan and couldn’t afford COBRA coverage. Having gone uninsured for months, she said she believes the healthcare system is broken based on her inability to find a good plan despite days of effort calling different insurance companies.
“I spent an entire month — 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. with three phones in front of me — waiting on the phone on hold to get access to these people. They put me through circles and circles and circles,” she said.
Another woman from Brooklyn said she came to court because she believed Mangione was bringing attention to the need for universal healthcare in the United States. She added that she didn’t trust the media coverage of Mangione’s case and wanted to see the proceedings with her own eyes to draw conclusions.
“There was a lot of support from where we were in the back [of court],” she said after attending the arraignment in person. “I believe it’s a conversation that a lot of people are having now, and whatever we can do to help progress this conversation is worthy of participating in.”
Bill Dobbs, who lives in Manhattan, said he was motivated to support Mangione after federal prosecutors charged the 26-year-old with a crime that carries the death penalty. He held a sign that read “Justice not Vengeance.”
“It’s very alarming there could be a death penalty,” he said. “Punishment has got to leave a chance for change, and the death penalty doesn’t.”
Mangione’s disdain for the healthcare industry only added to his reasons to support the alleged killer, Dobbs said.
“What’s going on in the private healthcare industry is scandalous,” he said.
While most of the protestors said they believed Mangione was innocent, their support for Mangione carried an implicit incongruence — Is Mangione an innocent victim or a martyr for confronting the healthcare industry through his alleged actions? Many protestors who spoke with ABC News reconciled the beliefs by referencing the plague of mass shootings impacting the United States, claiming that the attention on Mangione and terrorism label is evidence of a broken justice system.
“He’s an alleged shooter, but how many school shooters are labeled with terrorism. How many?” asked one protestor.
(LOS ANGELES) — Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón has recommended resentencing for Lyle and Erik Menendez, who are each serving two life prison terms without parole.
“We are going to recommend to the court [on Friday] that the life without the possibility of parole be removed and they would be sentenced for murder,” which would be a sentence of 50 years to life, Gascón said at a news conference Thursday. But because of their age — they both were under 26 at the time of the crimes — they would be eligible for parole immediately, he said.
“I believe that they have paid their debt to society,” he said.
“The final decision will be made by the judge,” he stressed.
Gascón told ABC News this month that any recommendation for resentencing would take into account the decades that the brothers already served and their behavior in prison. The brothers’ attorney, Mark Geragos, called them model prisoners who worked tirelessly to reform themselves with no expectation they’d be released.
The decades-old case began on Aug. 20, 1989, when Lyle and Erik Menendez fatally shot their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in the family’s Beverly Hills home. Lyle Menendez, then 21, and Erik Menendez, then 18, used shotguns they bought days earlier.
Prosecutors alleged the brothers killed their wealthy parents for financial gain.
The defense argued the brothers acted in self-defense after enduring years of sexual abuse by their father.
Their first trials — which captured the nation’s attention with cameras in the courtroom — ended in mistrials.
In 1996, at the end of a second trial — in which the judge barred much of the sex abuse evidence — the brothers were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to two consecutive life prison terms without the possibility of parole.
The sensational case gained new attention this fall with the release of the Netflix drama “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” and the Netflix documentary “The Menendez Brothers.”
Gascón said this month that his office was evaluating new evidence: allegations from a member of the boy band Menudo who said he was molested by Jose Menendez, and a letter Erik Menendez wrote to a cousin eight months before the murders detailing his alleged abuse.
Erik Menendez’s cousin testified about the alleged abuse at trial, but Erik Menendez’s letter — which would have corroborated the cousin’s testimony — wasn’t unearthed until several years ago, according to Geragos.
“Their actions, while tragic, were the desperate response of two boys trying to survive the unspeakable cruelty of their father,” Kitty Menendez’s sister, Joan Andersen VanderMolen, said. “As their aunt, I had no idea of the extent of the abuse they suffered.”
“It’s time to give them the opportunity to live the rest of their lives free from the shadow of their past,” she said.
Behind bars, the siblings “sought to better themselves and serve as a support and inspiration for survivors all over the world,” added Jose Menendez’s niece, Anamaria Baralt. “Their continued incarceration serves no rehabilitative purpose.”
The brothers “deserve a chance to heal, and our family deserves a chance to heal with them,” Baralt said.
Despite the massive show of support, one relative — the brothers’ uncle, Milton Andersen — is adamant about keeping them behind bars. He said in a statement he firmly believes his nephews were not sexually assaulted and were motivated by greed.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
