Washington (AP) Enrique Tarrio, the former national chairman of the Proud Boys, is scheduled to testify on Thursday at the trial of a retired police officer from Washington, D.C., who is accused of giving the leader of a far-right extremist group secret information. This comes after Tarrio and other members of the Proud Boys set fire to a stolen Black Lives Matter banner.
Tarrio will testify as the first defense witness in the federal trial of former Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Shane Lamond, who is accused of obstructing justice and making false statements on his communications with Tarrio.
Prosecutors from the Justice Department rested their case against Lamond on Wednesday.
In connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by a group of Donald Trump supporters, Tarrio is currently serving a 22-year jail sentence. He and other Proud Boys leaders were found guilty by a jury of seditious conspiracy for plotting to prevent Trump and Joe Biden from peacefully handing over the presidency following the 2020 election.
After hearing testimony without a jury, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson will render a decision against Lamond.
The court stated on Monday that Tarrio was awaiting the results of the presidential election held last month before determining whether or not to testify at Lamond’s trial. Trump, the president-elect, indicated he would think about pardoning Tarrio. Trump has made it clear time and time again that he will pardon those found guilty of rioting in the Capitol.
For carrying two high-capacity handgun magazines into the district and burning the banner that was taken from a historic Black church in downtown Washington in December 2020, Tarrio received a sentence of more than five months in prison.
Two days before to the siege on January 6, Tarrio was taken into custody in Washington. When a group of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and disrupted the congressional certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory, the Miami resident wasn’t there.
Lamond was a supporter of the Proud Boys who told Tarrio that he would be arrested for destroying the banner and then lied to police about their conversations, according to the prosecutor’s opening arguments at the trial on Monday.
Lamond had overseen the police department’s Homeland Security Bureau’s intelligence division before meeting Tarrio in 2019. When groups like the Proud Boys visited Washington, he was in charge of keeping an eye on them.
He was accused by Lamond Sindictment of deceiving and lying to federal authorities in June 2021 when they asked him about his interactions with Tarrio.
Acting MPD Capt. Nicole Copeland, who oversaw the police investigation into the banner burning, was one of the government’s final witnesses. According to Copeland’s testimony on Wednesday, knowing that Tarrio had confessed to Lamond in private would have aided investigators. The head of the Proud Boys also acknowledged burning the banner in a podcast and on social media.
Lamond, a resident of Stafford, Virginia, was taken into custody in May 2023. In the same month, he retired from the police force.
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