WASHINGTON — After being transferred from prison where he is serving out a 22-year sentence for seditious conspiracy, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, a former leader of extremist group the Proud Boys, took the witness stand Thursday in the trial of a former D.C. police officer accused of disclosing insider information to him and then lying about it to investigators.
Shane Lamond, once the head of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department’s intelligence division, is charged with obstruction of justice and making multiple false statements. Prosecutors say he tipped Tarrio off about a police probe into the Proud Boys and the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner on Dec. 12, 2020.
Tarrio, wearing a dark green prison-issued jumpsuit and black-rimmed glasses, denied ever having a friendship with Lamond and repeatedly denied ever receiving information in advance from police about a warrant for his arrest.
Instead, the former Proud Boys leader testified he was a “Twitter head,” constantly perusing social media. A social media post from the D.C. MPD about the banner burning was what alerted him he could soon be arrested, he claimed.
Tarrio admitted Thursday that on Dec. 15, just days after the incident, he spoke to Lamond. But he said he never confessed to Lamond directly that he burned the banner.
He wanted to do it himself and create a “circus” in the process, he testified.
“I was dead set on getting arrested ... that was my plan. I wanted to be arrested for burning the banner,” Tarrio said.
“I’m a dedicated person ... Here. I’ll be honest. I wanted to put up the circus tent,” he continued. “The only way to do that was to push the message out that I was about to be arrested for burning a BLM banner when so many American flags are being burned in D.C.”
People needed to see the arrest was “real,” Tarrio told defense lawyer Mark Schamel.
“And I was going to show what the Department of Justice was and I was dedicated to that cause with everything in me,” Tarrio said.
Prosecutors say Lamond told Tarrio about the probe into the banner burning roughly a week after it happened and disclosed that police were weighing whether it should be charged as a hate crime. Lamond allegedly told Tarrio over text he would check to see if criminal investigators had footage of him burning the banner and allegedly warned Tarrio too that the FBI and U.S. Secret Service were “all spun up” after the Proud Boys leader went on Infowars.
When Tarrio was on trial for seditious conspiracy, prosecutors argued the arrest, facilitated by his relationship with Lamond, ultimately ended up giving the Proud Boys leader a tidy alibi for his whereabouts on Jan. 6, 2021.
When the cross-examination started and it appeared prosecutors would ask Tarrio about Jan. 6, he refused. He said he would not discuss it on the stand and threatened to invoke his Fifth Amendment right.
This prompted Judge Amy Berman Jackson to stop proceedings and call lawyers over for a private discussion.
Once proceedings resumed, there was a tense exchange between Tarrio and the judge.
Jackson reminded him that Lamond’s trial, which was supposed to begin in October, had already been delayed once before because Tarrio said he would assert his Fifth Amendment right if called to the stand before the 2024 election was over. Tarrio said at the time that he was willing to testify later.
With the election over, he agreed to come forward and his lawyers had advised him what it meant if he took the stand, Jackson said.
“You don’t get to pick or choose. You’re being ordered to answer [questions],” Jackson said. “I’m telling you right now: if [prosecutor Rebecca Ross] asks you a question, you have to answer it. You’re not getting to choose. You waived your Fifth Amendment right.”
“Are you saying I have no Fifth Amendment right?” Tarrio shot back.
“You had one. You waived it,” the judge said, reminding a visibly tense Tarrio that all the prosecutors were going to ask him about regarding Jan. 6 was whether he was convicted of a crime for events tied to that day.
A terse back-and-forth between the former Proud Boys leader and the judge ensued. Tarrio said he wanted to make a statement and Jackson refused, sternly warning him that if he disobeyed her order to answer questions, she could hold him in contempt or strike his testimony from the record altogether.
“I’m OK with it,” Tarrio said.
Once Ross finally resumed the cross-examination and began questioning Tarrio regarding texts between him and Lamond in late 2020 and early 2021, most of his answers amounted to “I don’t remember” or “I don’t recall” with little variation.
At the crux of the prosecution’s case is their contention that Lamond was a Proud Boys sympathizer acting as a “double agent.” When he was interviewed by investigators looking into his conduct, prosecutors contend, he lied about the extent of his contact with Tarrio and tried to spin the relationship as a typical one between a source and officer.
Prosecutors say the record shows it was anything but typical. The men shared at least 500 texts. They met for a beer together at a local hotel. Lamond greeted Tarrio in texts: “Hey brother.”
“Did Mr. Lamond tell you he supported the Proud Boys?” Ross asked Tarrio Thursday.
Tarrio said he couldn’t recall, but then said he had “no idea if [Lamond] did or didn’t” support the extremist organization.
Ross pulled up a text message Lamond allegedly sent to Tarrio on Jan. 8, 2021. It read: “Of course I can’t say it officially, but personally I support you all and don’t want to see the group’s name and reputation dragged through the mud.”
Tarrio paused for a moment on the stand.
“I don’t want to be an a-hole,” he said. “I can’t answer yes or no.”
Harkening back to a common refrain from defense lawyers during the Proud Boys seditious conspiracy trial last year, Tarrio said he couldn’t trust whether the exhibit displayed on the screens in the courtroom was accurate or genuine.
“I don’t know who made this extraction,” Tarrio said of the cell phone data showing the messages between himself and Lamond.
“I don’t want to be an a-hole about this,” he repeated. “I can’t trust the FBI or DOJ to put these together in any accurate fashion.”
Tarrio said at least 20 times on Thursday that he wouldn’t or couldn’t confirm the evidence in front of him.
“I can do this all day,” he said.
Watching Tarrio’s testimony from the courtroom on Thursday was Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason McCullough. McCullough prosecuted Tarrio during the sedition trial.
At one point, when Tarrio was asked to confirm or deny whether he sent messages as they were brought up on a display screen in front of him, he remarked that “based on previous experiences,” he couldn’t trust what was there. Then he looked right at McCullough and smiled.
Ross asked Tarrio too about a meeting he had with Lamond at The Dubliner bar in D.C. on Dec. 15, 2020, just days after the banner burning.
Messages in evidence showed Tarrio asking Lamond if the lieutenant would give him an assessment of how the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department viewed the Proud Boys. Lamond replied that it was too much for a text and better for a conversation over a beer.
Tarrio denied that he confessed to destroying the banner during that meeting or during any other chats with Lamond. But he said he “vaguely” remembered one text message pulled up on-screen Thursday where he asked Lamond if police were going to “make a stink” of his destruction of property charge and add a hate crime enhancement. Lamond, in a secret Telegram chat with Tarrio, allegedly wrote: “No, a bit of the opposite really” and that he had been talking to supervisors about it and fielded questions from them on whether the Proud Boys were a racist organization.
Lamond told Tarrio that if police were going to charge Tarrio with a hate crime for burning the BLM banner, they would have to investigate any burning of pro-Donald Trump flags in the district.
“I remember asking Shane if this would amount to a hate crime. I think asking a police officer about the law would be wise,” Tarrio said on Thursday before glancing back to the text message displayed on the screen.
“Whoever said this is a genius because he is right,” he remarked.
Tarrio’s cross-examination continued late into Thursday afternoon. Beyond the texts, he was also asked questions about remarks he made during a recorded meeting in an underground parking garage in Washington, D.C., on the eve of the insurrection.
Tarrio met Oath Keeper leader Stewart Rhodes in the garage, Latinos for Trump attorney Bianca Gracia and others, after his arrest for the banner. At the time, filmmaker Nick Quested was already filming Tarrio for a documentary. Quested captured part of the meeting in the garage on film before Tarrio shooed Quested away as he spoke to Rhodes.
The clip was relevant for prosecutors trying Lamond because in it, Tarrio can be heard saying that he learned about the warrant for his own arrest while he was in the air, indicating that he might have been tipped by Lamond.
In court Thursday, though, Tarrio said he was lying to Gracia and others in the garage. When he sent text messages to fellow Proud Boys alerting them that he learned about the status of the banner-burning probe from his D.C. cop contact, that too was a lie, he testified.
Prosecutors sounded incredulous.
“You repeatedly lied to Proud Boys, but you’re telling the truth today?” Ross asked.
Tarrio didn’t answer. All the people in the garage had high follower counts on social media, he replied. He “knew” they would “project” his message, what he also called his “marketing ploy.”
He lied to the Proud Boys about getting the heads-up on the warrant, he claimed, because he wanted his arrest to excite them.
A still incredulous sounding-prosecutor asked Tarrio how it could be that he lied about it all for the sake of his “messaging.”
“Well, I wasn’t convicted of perjury,” he said.
The case is now in the defense’s hands after federal prosecutors rested Wednesday.
But before they did, they offered the judge key testimony from witnesses including Lamond’s former supervisor, D.C. Metropolitan Police Executive Assistant Chief Jeffery Carroll, and Sean Ricardi, a special agent with the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Carroll testified there was no reason Lamond and Tarrio should have ever been communicating via secret channels on Telegram. When Lamond, for example, told Tarrio law enforcement agencies were “all spun up,” that was not something MPD would have authorized Lamond to share with a source, he said.
Many of the voice messages that were sent between Tarrio and Lamond should have been preserved; instead, prosecutors showed how they were routinely destroyed and are now unable to be recovered.
Carroll said that, when he finally saw the breadth of communications between Tarrio and Lamond, it looked like Lamond was sharing internal conversations about the investigation into the banner burning and that it looked like Lamond was “talking to a friend.”
Ricardi said Wednesday that he was at an interview when the FBI first probed Lamond’s conduct to observe. The meeting was prompted after the FBI found text messages in other Proud Boys communications where Tarrio referenced having a source in the department named Shane, Ricardi said.
Ricardi said the interview started out smoothly. Lamond was affable and cooperative. The officer was asked about apps he used to communicate with Tarrio and whether the men had talked by phone or by email.
“I can’t remember, I think it was by text too. I don’t remember... I think Telegram maybe,” Lamond was heard saying on an audio recording of his interview played in court Wednesday.
Prosecutors said that, by the time of this interview, Lamond had already communicated with Tarrio hundreds of times.
When the former police lieutenant was asked whether it seemed like the Proud Boys leader was “fishing” for information, Lamond claimed Tarrio would “never tell me where the group was staying” just where Tarrio was staying.
But the messages shown in court appeared to show Tarrio telling Lamond over various points where Proud Boys were headed for events, whether they would be at certain hotels or how many Proud Boys they might be expecting at a given event.
Lamond has pleaded not guilty and he maintains that his interactions with Tarrio were strictly based on intelligence gathering for the Metropolitan Police Department’s intelligence division.
Lamond is now expected to testify on Friday, and closing arguments are expected Monday.