A convicted Jan. 6 rioter who later said that he regretted his participation in the U.S. Capitol attack has been hired by the Trump administration to work inside a Pentagon office that manages highly classified military operations, according to four people familiar with the matter.
The appointment of Elias Irizarry, who was 19 at the time of the riot in 2021, to a post in the Defense Department’s Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict office has raised alarm internally among staff who question how anyone convicted in the assault on American democracy could be trusted for such a sensitive role in the U.S. government, these people said. All spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing a fear of retaliation.
Irizarry is assigned to the office’s irregular warfare and counterterrorism section, the people familiar with the matter said. The team comprises about 40 people, and its portfolio includes operations such as embassy security, personnel recovery and hostage rescue.
Two people characterized the work as among the most delicate that the Pentagon performs. All positions, they said, require a top-secret security clearance.
“In the case of rescue/extraction missions, it can place our special operators in some of the most complex and dangerous environments we ask of them,” said one person familiar with Irizarry’s hiring. “To put someone so junior and new to DOD, and with such a checkered background, into such a sensitive portfolio raises serious questions for leadership.”
Irizarry did not respond to requests for comment.
In a statement, the acting Pentagon press secretary, Joel Valdez, said that Irizarry is “a qualified, patriotic young professional, and we are proud to have him as a political appointee” at the Defense Department.
It’s unclear who within the Trump administration appointed him to the post.
At the time of the Capitol attack, Irizarry was a freshman at The Citadel, a public military college in South Carolina, and serving as a cadet in the Civil Air Patrol, court filings show.
After traveling to Washington with two other men, Irizarry joined the mob of Donald Trump supporters who breached police lines and broke into the building while members of Congress attempted to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. Prosecutors said that, along with the crowds, he entered through a broken window while wielding a metal pole, but that he never struck anyone.
Irizarry pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds and was sentenced to 14 days in jail, court filings show.
In those legal filings, Irizarry was described as attending Trump’s rally at the Ellipse before ending up at the riot by happenstance and quickly disavowing his involvement.
But the judge in his case also described him as someone who at critical moments on Jan. 6 — such as when one of his traveling companions, Grayson Sherrill, struck a police officer with a pole — did nothing to stop the violence. Sherrill was sentenced to seven months in custody in 2023 after pleading guilty to assaulting federal officers.
Irizarry apologized to the widows of several law enforcement officers who lost their lives, who he said, “had to bury their partners because of that horrible day.”
“I am ashamed because I will always be a part of this disgrace,” Irizarry said at his sentencing in 2023. “January 6th represented something truly horrible; it was the largest attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”
Irizarry, who was among the youngest of the Jan. 6 defendants, ended up in Washington that day because he’d been trying to spend time with his friend, the third traveling companion, Elliot Bishai, before Bishai joined the military, court records show.
Bishai pleaded guilty to the same misdemeanor as Irizarry and lost a commission to join the Army Warrant Officer Flight Program as a result, according to a 2023 court filing. Bishai was separated from the military’s delayed entry program and never served, an Army official said on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.
Irizarry’s record before the Capitol attack had been “quite commendable,” U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan noted at his sentencing. She offered at the time to write him a letter to help him reapply to The Citadel after the school discharged him for his involvement in the assault.
Chutkan’s chambers did not respond when asked if she ultimately wrote the letter. Irizarry was readmitted to The Citadel in 2023 and graduated the following year, Citadel spokesman Zach Watson said.
Federal prosecutors at the time of his sentencing said Irizarry’s service in the Civil Air Patrol and his military training made his decisions that day “all the more egregious,” according to a sentencing brief.
When FBI agents obtained a search warrant for Irizarry’s phone, they found “a gap of data between January 1, 2021 and January 8, 2021, which suggests that Irizarry deleted information from his cell phone pertaining to his involvement on January 6, 2021,” the prosecutors added.
Irizarry, Sherrill and Bishai were among the Jan. 6 participants pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2025.
Trump pardoned nearly all the rioters — more than 1,500 — who were charged by the Justice Department and commuted the sentences of the most serious offenders, who were convicted of carrying out a seditious conspiracy against the United States. But the Justice Department then began throwing out those rioters’ convictions last year, a process that is expected to be complete within weeks.
Since graduating, Irizarry has run unsuccessfully for a South Carolina state House seat, losing in the 2024 Republican primary to state Rep. Randy Ligon. His biography on the professional networking site LinkedIn says that he earned multiple academic honors during his time at The Citadel and cites “Patriot” as his profession since January 2024.
In 2023, as he was being sentenced, he told the judge and those assembled that he was committed to doing better.
“While you see me today as a result of my foolish mistake, I hope that you will see me again someday and be proud of what you see,” Irizarry said.
In 2023, Republican leaders in Congress demanded that then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin explain one of the Biden administration’s hires within the Pentagon’s office of Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict. Lawmakers had alleged that Ariane Tabatabai, a national security scholar and Middle East expert who was serving as the office’s chief of staff, had questionable ties to Iran’s government.
At the time, the House Armed Services Committee’s Republican chairman, Rep. Mike D. Rogers (Alabama), said that Tabatabai’s work history and past “should be disqualifying for anyone seeking such a sensitive position of trust within the United States Department of Defense.”
Sen. Roger Wicker (Mississippi), the Senate Armed Services Committee’s top Republican, organized a group of 30 GOP lawmakers who demanded a review of the allegations and the suspension of Tabatabai’s security clearance. She was eventually promoted and assigned to another office in the Pentagon, a move made by the Biden administration without public explanation.
The next year, the Pentagon defended Tabatabai when an international media outlet falsely suggested that she was the source of an intelligence leak on potential Israeli military strikes against Iran. The leak was eventually traced to a CIA analyst who pleaded guilty to violating the Espionage Act and was sentenced to prison.
Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.
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