Ex-Proud Boys Leader dodges questions at trial of officer charged with feeding him intel
Source: NBC News
Dec. 5, 2024, 6:22 PM EST
WASHINGTON — Former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio, who is serving 22 years in prison on charges related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, sparred with a federal prosecutor and a judge and refused to answer questions related to Jan. 6 on Thursday during combative testimony in the trial of the former head of intelligence for Washington, D.C., police.
Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison following his conviction on seditious conspiracy charges, testified for the defense during the trial of Shane Lamond, who is charged with tipping off Tarrio that a warrant was out for his arrest because of a previous incident as Tarrio traveled to Washington ahead of the attack. Lamond was indicted last year on one count of obstruction of justice and three counts of making false statements to law enforcement about his communications with Tarrio, who was arrested when he arrived in Washington on Jan. 4, 2021, over a separate incident involving the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner during Tarrio's earlier trip to the city.
Prosecutors said Lamond became a “double agent” for the far-right group. FBI Special Agent Elizabeth Hadley testified Tuesday that Lamond had lied to his law enforcement colleagues about his relationship with Tarrio, writing in one message shortly before the Jan. 6 attack that he had met Tarrio just over a year earlier, in July 2019, and had spoken to him only five or six times. In fact, records show, Lamond and Tarrio had shared at least 24 calls that lasted more than a minute and 15 calls that lasted under a minute, and they exchanged more than 432 messages over an encrypted platform.
The story Tarrio told on the stand Thursday was that he was contemporaneously lying to his fellow Proud Boys about his communications with a Washington police source and that — even though he was, in fact, messaging with Lamond on an encrypted platform at the time — he was just making things up in his chats with others. Tarrio said he knew there was an investigation into the burning of the Black Lives Matter banner and planned to get arrested to draw attention to himself and the Proud Boys.
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/ex-proud-boys-dodges-questions-trial-officer-intel-lamond-rcna182870
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