Enrique Tarrio said in an interview that prosecutors believed he had communicated with President Donald Trump through intermediaries before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
With leaders of the far-right groups that helped drive the attack on the Capitol sentenced to long prison terms, attention is shifting to the fraught process of prosecuting Donald Trump.
The prison term for Enrique Tarrio was the most severe penalty handed down so far to any of the more than 1,100 people charged in connection with the Capitol attack.
Dominic Pezzola was the third member of the far-right group to be sentenced this week. Among the first of the rioters to enter the Capitol, he was convicted of six felonies but acquitted of sedition.
Federal prosecutors recommended the sentence for the group’s former chairman and a top lieutenant, while also asking for long prison terms for the other three defendants in the case.