Ex-Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio is set to testify at a retired police officer’s trial

Enrique Tarrio. Image via AP.

Former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio is expected to testify on Thursday at the trial of a retired Washington, D.C., police officer accused of leaking confidential information to the far-right extremist group leader after Tarrio and other Proud Boys burned a stolen Black Lives Matter banner.

Attorneys for former Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Shane Lamond plan to call Tarrio as their first defense witness for Lamond’s federal trial on charges that he obstructed justice and made false statements about his communications with Tarrio.

Justice Department prosecutors rested their case against Lamond on Wednesday.

Tarrio is serving a 22-year prison sentence related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump supporters. A jury convicted him and other Proud Boys leaders of seditious conspiracy for a plot to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from Trump to Joe Biden after the 2020 election.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson will decide the case against Lamond after hearing testimony without a jury.

On Monday, the judge said Tarrio was waiting for the outcome of last month’s presidential election before deciding whether to testify at Lamond’s trial. President-elect Trump, who repeatedly has vowed to pardon people convicted of Capitol riot charges, suggested he would consider pardoning Tarrio.

Tarrio was sentenced to more than five months in jail for burning the banner that was stolen in December 2020 from a historic Black church in downtown Washington, and for bringing two high-capacity firearm magazines into the district.

During the trial’s opening statements on Monday, a prosecutor said Lamond was a “Proud Boys sympathizer” who warned Tarrio about his impending arrest for the banner’s destruction and later lied to investigators about their communications.

Lamond, who met Tarrio in 2019, had supervised the intelligence branch of the police department’s Homeland Security Bureau. He was responsible for monitoring groups like the Proud Boys when they came to Washington.

Lamond’s indictment accuses him of lying to and misleading federal investigators when they questioned him in June 2021 about his contacts with Tarrio.

One of the government’s last witnesses was acting MPD Capt. Nicole Copeland, who supervised the police investigation of the banner burning. Copeland testified on Wednesday that it would have helped investigators to know that Tarrio had privately confessed to Lamond. The Proud Boys leader also publicly admitted on social media and on a podcast that he had burned the banner.

Lamond, of Stafford, Virginia, was arrested in May 2023. He retired from the police department that same month.

___

Republished with permission of The Associated Press.