SEATTLE - It has been almost four years since the neofascist, white nationalist, all-male organization known as the Proud Boys led the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Since the violent extremist group failed attempt to overthrow the government, four of its former leaders have been convicted in federal court of seditious conspiracy and each has received 15 or more years in prison as a sentence.
Despite the arrest of its leaders and at least 70 other members, some Proud Boys say they are preparing to emerge once again as a physical force for President-elect Donald Trump, who has himself promised to pardon convicted Jan. 6 rioters.
But according to recent developments in one of the cases, former D.C. police lieutenant Shane Lamond will find it harder than others to be pardoned, as he has been recently labelled to had become a "sympathizer" as well as a "double agent" for the far-right Proud Boys group.
According to claims made by federal prosecutors, Lamond leaked word to the Proud Boys leader Henry "Enrique" Tarrio, that he would be arrested a few days before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
"Lamond leaked sensitive police information to a criminal suspect, and lied about it to investigators," Assistant U.S. Attorney Joshua Rothstein told U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson.
Rothstein added that the evidence that will be shared during the three-day bench trial "will show the defendant was a Proud Boys sympathizer," arguing that Lamond funneled information to the group.
At the time of the Jan. 6 riot, Lamond served as head of Washington D.C.'s police's intelligence unit. The 24-year department veteran has pleaded not guilty to one count of obstruction of justice and three counts of making false statements. His lawyer argues that the contact his client had with Tarrio was within the bounds of how police runs sources and gathers intelligence and added that Lamond was "instrumental" to the arrest of the Proud Boys' leader.
In her opening statement, defense attorney Ana L. Jara told the court that context matters, and later accused federal investigators of misinterpreting a handful of texts that she considers were "cherry-picked" from three months of conversations, focusing more on Lamond's answers instead of questions asked by Tarrio and federal investigators.
"Context matters, especially in conversations," Jara said.
According to court records, Tarrio and Lamond exchanged hundreds of messages across several platforms, and Lamond frequently greeted Tarrio with the words "hey brother."
The prosecution said that Lamond's turn to becoming a double agent began on on Nov. 7, 2020, when Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential elections.
"Need to switch to encrypted," Lamond wrote to Tarrio in a social media message on Parler, and over the next three months, they exchanged 109 iMessage texts as well as 40 encrypted Telegram messages in which Lamond shared sensitive police information.
Rothstein said the former lieutenant provided Tarrio with real-time updates on the police investigation of the Dec. 12, 2020 banner burning case in which the Proud Boys leader was involved.
The indictment also accuses Lamond of lying to and misleading federal investigators when they questioned him in June 2021 about his contacts with Tarrio. "The defendant knew the truth, and he chose to lie anyway," Rothstein said.
The leader of the extremist group was sentenced to more than five months in jail back in Aug. 2021 for burning a Black Lives Matter banner that was torn down from a historic Black church in downtown Washington and bringing two high-capacity firearm magazines into the nation's capital.
"This play-by-play information allowed the Proud Boys to be one step ahead of law enforcement," the prosecutor said.
Tarrio was arrested two days before the Jan. 6 riot and is currently serving a 22-year prison sentence after a jury convicted him and other Proud Boys leaders of seditious conspiracy charges.
Despite the magnitude of the case, the judge overseeing the Lamond trial said Tarrio was waiting for the outcome of last month's presidential election before deciding whether to testify at Lamond's trial, as Trump has repeatedly vowed to pardon people convicted of Capitol riot charges and has suggested he would consider pardoning Tarrio.
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