Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the far-right Proud Boys, appeared in court on Thursday for the first time since he was sentenced for his role in the events of Jan. 6, 2021, testifying in defense of a police officer accused of improperly feeding him sensitive information.
Mr. Tarrio was on the witness stand for over two hours. His testimony was largely focused on whether the Washington police officer, Lt. Shane Lamond, had given him advance warning that he was going to be arrested when he flew to Washington in early January 2021 for a pro-Trump rally that turned into the attack on the Capitol.
Even though it was relatively brief, Mr. Tarrio’s return to Federal District Court in Washington, where he and three of his lieutenants were convicted last year of seditious conspiracy in connection with the Capitol attack, was a legal spectacle of sorts.
At one point, Mr. Tarrio, who is serving a 22-year prison term, sparred with the judge presiding over the trial, Amy Berman Jackson, refusing to acknowledge that text messages between him and Mr. Lamond were authentic. At another, he refused to answer questions, attempting to assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, until Judge Jackson paused the proceedings to discuss how to proceed if he stonewalled prosecutors’ questions.
When Mr. Tarrio returned to the stand, Judge Jackson told him that by agreeing to appear in court, he had effectively waived any Fifth Amendment protections — a legal finding he took issue with.
“I cannot tell you I won’t take my Fifth Amendment right when I see fit,” Mr. Tarrio said.
“Well, as I see fit,” Judge Jackson responded, “it may involve striking your testimony. It may involve contempt. It may involve a lot of things.”
The trial for Mr. Lamond began on Monday as federal prosecutors told Judge Jackson that the defendant was “a double agent for the Proud Boys.” Prosecutors say that Mr. Lamond, a veteran intelligence officer in the Metropolitan Police Department, crossed the line by sending Mr. Tarrio tips about investigations and other “sensitive police information” in the months when the far-right group was frequently in Washington for pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” rallies.
Lawyers for Mr. Lamond have argued that it was part of his job to develop relationships with figures like Mr. Tarrio and to extract information from him about the Proud Boys’ plans and movements. The lawyers say the two men traded hundreds of text messages in the months leading up to Jan. 6 and that investigators have taken many of them out of context.
One of those communications lay at the heart of Mr. Tarrio’s testimony.
On Jan. 4, 2021, as he was flying from Miami to Washington to be on the streets with other Proud Boys two days later, Mr. Tarrio got an unusual message from Mr. Lamond. It was an encrypted text on the platform Telegram. Under the security protocols that Mr. Lamond had chosen, it automatically deleted itself 10 seconds after it was sent.
Though prosecutors were never able to retrieve the message, they claim that Mr. Lamond had improperly reached out to Mr. Tarrio to warn him he was going to be taken into custody as soon as he stepped off the plane. Police had issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Tarrio, accusing him of burning a Black Lives Matter banner at a Black church in Washington in the chaotic hours after a pro-Trump rally a month earlier.
The Proud Boys played a central role in the violence that erupted at the Capitol, breaching several barricades and allowing hundreds of other rioters to break into the building. Dozens of the group’s members were arrested and prosecuted, including Mr. Tarrio, who was not at the Capitol on Jan. 6 because the judge overseeing his banner burning case kicked him out of Washington shortly after his arrest and barred him from returning.
On the witness stand on Thursday, Mr. Tarrio denied that Mr. Lamond had tipped him off about the arrest. He told Judge Jackson that he had gone to Washington with the intent of being arrested to highlight what he called the hypocrisy of leftist protesters being allowed to demonstrate under the protections of the First Amendment.
He said he had deduced that he was about to be arrested while observing an undercover officer wearing tactical clothes and an earpiece following him from the airport. Only then, he said, did he start calling friends and reporters to gin up attention and “maximize the message.”
“I’m a dedicated person,” he said. “I wanted to put up the circus tent, with the message that I was about to be arrested.”
On cross-examination, prosecutors showed Mr. Tarrio dozens of other Telegram messages in which Mr. Lamond kept him updated about the status of the investigation, expressing support for the Proud Boys and making plans to meet at a bar to discuss more. They also showed messages in which Mr. Tarrio relayed information from Mr. Lamond to others, often bragging that he or the Proud Boys were in the clear or that police had failed to identify them.
He denied knowing much about Mr. Lamond at all, including whether he was a friend or a source, and described their relationship as revolving around coordinating security for events.
“I can’t tell you what Shane was or wasn’t,” he said. “He wasn’t a Proud Boy — I can tell you that.”
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