The former head of the Metropolitan police intelligence unit in Washington DC has been found guilty of tipping off Enrique Tarrio – the imprisoned, one-time leader of the Proud Boys – that a warrant was out for his arrest before the January 6 Capitol attack in 2021.
Shane Lamond has been charged with tipping off Tarrio, who at the time of the Capitol attack was wanted for the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner.
Tarrio is currently serving 22 years after being convicted of seditious conspiracy in connection with the Capitol riot. Tarrio was arrested when he arrived in Washington on a flight from Miami two days before the attack.
During Tarrio’s testimony to the court, he said he wanted to travel to Washington before the January 6 attack to “get this over with” – and to set up a “circus tent” to use his arrest as a “marketing ploy”.
Lamond was found guilty on Monday of four counts, including one of obstruction of justice and three of lying to investigators.
The verdict followed a bench trial that featured testimony from Tarrio, who maintained he had been contemporaneously lying to his fellow Proud Boys about receiving information from a source in the Washington DC police department.
A federal grand jury charged Lamond in May 2023 with obstructing the investigation into the burning of the banner a month before the Capitol attack – when the Proud Boys were roaming the streets of Washington DC for a pro-Donald Trump event.
During Lamond’s trial, prosecutors said that the former police officer acted as a “double agent” for the Proud Boys. Tarrio and Lamond communicated “at least 500 times using cloud-based messaging services”, the indictment alleged, including 101 messages on Telegram that were set to disappear.
Lamond’s defense said that their client’s communications with Tarrio were a part of his job. But prosecutors showed that Lamond wrote of his affinity for the Proud Boys. In those communications, Lamond said he supported the group and did not “want to see your group’s name or reputation dragged through the mud”, an indictment alleged.
According to the indictment, Lamond had also advised Tarrio that he tried to convince another unit within the Washington DC police department that the Proud Boys were not racist.
“I told them you are made up a lot of Latinos and blacks so not a racist thing. If anything I said it’s political but then I drew attention to the Trump and American flags that were taken by Antifa and set on fire,” Lamond wrote in an alleged message contained in the indictment. “I said all those would have to be classified as hate crimes too.”
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After the January 6 attack, which aimed to keep Trump in office after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden, Lamond and Tarrio allegedly continued communicating. Tarrio told Lamond he thought he “could have stopped this whole thing”, meaning the Capitol attack, in another purported message cited in the indictment.
A watchdog report by the US justice department inspector general’s office earlier in December found that 26 FBI informants were in Washington DC for election-related protests on January 6 – and 17 had either entered the Capitol or a restricted area around the building during the riot.
“For those keeping score at home, this was labeled a dangerous conspiracy theory months ago,” JD Vance – who will serve as vice-president after Trump returns to the White House in January – wrote on X.
But it’s unclear if Lamond or Tarrio will be among the more than 1,500 defendants charged – and more than 1,100 convicted – that Trump has vowed to pardon on “day one” of his new term.
“I’m going to be acting very quickly, first day,” Trump said on NBC News’ Meet the Press earlier in December when asked when he planned to pardon his supporters who were charged. He told the outlet that there could be “some exceptions” to his pardons if the individuals had acted “radical” or “crazy”.
