Proud Boys Leader Called To Testify In Trial Of Former Cop Accused Of Being A ‘Double Agent’

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys currently serving 22 years for seditious conspiracy, to appear for possible testimony in the trial of Shane Lamond, a former D.C. Metropolitan Police lieutenant facing multiple felony charges for allegedly obstructing a probe into the Proud Boys and repeatedly lying to investigators.

Lamond’s defense lawyers want Tarrio to testify at the bench trial because they argue it will prove that Lamond’s communication with Tarrio after the 2020 election was part of the lieutenant’s official duties as leader of the police department’s intelligence division.

Federal prosecutors, however, say the relationship between Tarrio and Lamond was corrupt. U.S. attorneys argue Lamond was a Proud Boys sympathizer who worked as a “double agent” at the department.

Lamond, who is charged with obstruction of justice and making multiple false statements, is accused of passing information to Tarrio about a police probe into the Proud Boys and the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner on Dec. 12, 2020. Tarrio has pleaded guilty to burning the banner and was sentenced to five months in prison. He was also convicted on seditious conspiracy charges last year, and is now serving a 22-year prison sentence — to date, the longest sentence of any Jan. 6 defendant.

Presiding U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said Tuesday that she wants Tarrio transferred from prison to her courtroom by Wednesday afternoon. Prosecutors may rest their case against Lamond at that time and formally turn the floor over to the defense.

On Tuesday, Lamond, clean cut and sporting a gray suit, spent most of the day sitting next to his lawyers, chatting quietly with them as U.S. attorney Rebecca Ross pulled up text after text for the judge.

Ross argued that the messages, which were sent between November 2020 and January 2021, showed a friendly and steady repartee between Tarrio and Lamond that only grew in the weeks after Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.

On the night the 2020 election was called for President Joe Biden, for example, Lamond texted Tarrio to check in.

“Hey brother,” he wrote on Nov. 7, 2020. “Sad, sad news today. You all planning anything?”

Tarrio replied with a picture showing he was out off-roading.

“Nice. Wish I was there instead of here. Let me know if you do anything later,” Lamond replied.

Before Nov. 7, Tarrio and Lamond primarily spoke through unencrypted text channels and rarely used Telegram or Telegram’s private chat feature to connect. Of roughly 280 messages the men shared prior to Nov. 7, most were sent via SMS/text, according to testimony heard Tuesday from an FBI special agent.

Tarrio attended a pro-Trump rally in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 12, 2020. Prosecutors said Proud Boys members stole a Black Lives Matter banner from a church the night after the rally, then set it on fire. Tarrio posted a photo of himself on the far-right social media site Parler holding an unlit lighter; he later admitted online to destroying the banner.

The rally turned violent that night and led to multiple stabbings. Proud Boys member Jeremy Bertino, who pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy in October 2022 for his conduct on Jan. 6, was among those who were stabbed. Tensions were high the next night too, with Proud Boys beginning to voice their distrust and frustration with police.

Ross showed the judge texts showing Lamond had reached out to Tarrio after Bertino’s stabbing. On Dec. 12, he told the Proud Boys leader that “on a brighter note,” police had locked up the person who stabbed Bertino. The following day, Tarrio asked Lamond outright for his assessment of how D.C. police actually viewed the Proud Boys, according to texts shown by prosecutors.

That answer, Lamond wrote, was “too complicated” for a text message. The men agreed to meet at a local bar.

Other records showed that when Lamond told his supervisor at the time, Carolyn Montagna, about the meetup, she replied: “Eek. Is that smart to do social?”

Lamond assured her it was.

A day after that meeting, Tarrio fired off texts to Proud Boys in which he lamented that he may be going to jail for a hate crime after talking to “his guy” at the department.

At the time, police were investigating whether to enhance Tarrio’s destruction of property charge with a hate crime charge. They ultimately did not. The first secret chat Lamond opened with Tarrio on Telegram, Ross said, only came after police received a crime solvers tip online claiming Tarrio was responsible for burning the BLM banner.

Lamond asked Tarrio if he had submitted the tip on himself, and Tarrio said he had done more than that: He admitted to burning the banner on social media. Other texts revealed Tuesday showed Tarrio boasting to other Proud Boys that his confession to the crime allowed Proud Boys to “[get] the jump” on the “hate crime narrative” in the press.

The group, which espouses Western chauvinist values, claims it is not a racist organization largely by pointing to the diversity of its membership, including Tarrio, who is Latino. In an email to his supervisors in late 2020, Lamond said the Proud Boys organization wasn’t racist.

Lamond told Tarrio he had shared this opinion with higher-ups at the department. He also told Tarrio he advocated against bringing the hate crime enhancement because, as he told his supervisors, if Tarrio were going to be charged with a hate crime for burning the BLM banner, then all Trump flags or banners taken by “antifa” would have to be investigated as a hate crime.

“Ah ok awesome,” Tarrio replied to Lamond.

Tarrio took a screenshot of Lamond’s text and passed the message along to Proud Boys group chats.

As Jan. 6, 2021, approached, according to texts Ross showed the judge, Lamond informed Tarrio that police wanted to interview him about the burning of the banner. Prosecutors showed that several audio files — which are now unrecoverable — had been shared between Lamond and Tarrio and then later deleted. Some of the calls lasted just seconds. One call lasted up to 28 minutes.

Ross pointed out to the judge that records show Lamond and Tarrio talked at least 24 times for over a minute before Tarrio was finally arrested on Jan. 4, 2021. Notably, Lamond told detectives drafting Tarrio’s warrant that he had only seen Tarrio five or six times, Ross said. And he never mentioned all of the discussions he had with Tarrio outside of those meetings, MPD Lieutenant Ahsan Mufti testified on Monday.

During the Proud Boys seditious conspiracy trial, prosecutors argued that Tarrio used his arrest for the burning of the BLM banner as an alibi for his whereabouts on Jan. 6. He could not have been at the Capitol because he was ordered out of Washington, D.C. Instead, he watched from a hotel room in Baltimore, Maryland, as the insurrection was carried out.

Texts Ross showed Tuesday also suggested Tarrio was feeling the pressure to get to D.C. as he awaited word from Lamond on whether an arrest warrant had been approved. He had already bought his airline tickets.

“If I walk into the station on the 4th, they will have no choice but to pick me up,” Tarrio wrote in a message to another Proud Boy before boarding the flight to D.C.

Records showed the warrant had been issued by the time Tarrio got on the plane, and texts show that Lamond changed a self-destruct timer on his chats with Tarrio once the Proud Boys leader was en route, Ross told the judge. Instead of self-deleting every 30 seconds, they began to disappear after just 10 seconds.