WASHINGTON — Former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio, who is serving 22 years in prison on charges related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, sparred with a federal prosecutor and a judge and refused to answer questions related to Jan. 6 on Thursday during combative testimony in the trial of the former head of intelligence for Washington, D.C., police.
Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison following his conviction on seditious conspiracy charges, testified for the defense during the trial of Shane Lamond, who is charged with tipping off Tarrio that a warrant was out for his arrest because of a previous incident as Tarrio traveled to Washington ahead of the attack. Lamond was indicted last year on one count of obstruction of justice and three counts of making false statements to law enforcement about his communications with Tarrio, who was arrested when he arrived in Washington on Jan. 4, 2021, over a separate incident involving the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner during Tarrio’s earlier trip to the city.
Prosecutors said Lamond became a “double agent” for the far-right group. FBI Special Agent Elizabeth Hadley testified Tuesday that Lamond had lied to his law enforcement colleagues about his relationship with Tarrio, writing in one message shortly before the Jan. 6 attack that he had met Tarrio just over a year earlier, in July 2019, and had spoken to him only five or six times. In fact, records show, Lamond and Tarrio had shared at least 24 calls that lasted more than a minute and 15 calls that lasted under a minute, and they exchanged more than 432 messages over an encrypted platform.
The story Tarrio told on the stand Thursday was that he was contemporaneously lying to his fellow Proud Boys about his communications with a Washington police source and that — even though he was, in fact, messaging with Lamond on an encrypted platform at the time — he was just making things up in his chats with others. Tarrio said he knew there was an investigation into the burning of the Black Lives Matter banner and planned to get arrested to draw attention to himself and the Proud Boys.
Tarrio said he booked his Jan. 4 flight to Washington because he knew that the city doesn’t have bail and thought that he would be released on Jan. 5 and be able to participate in the pro-Trump events during the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory.
Tarrio said that he knew he was under investigation because police in Miami had reached out to him and that he was “dead set on getting arrested for burning the banner,” claiming that he planned to show up at a police station and turn himself in. Instead, Tarrio was arrested after he hopped in an Uber ride at the airport, and he said he had clocked a man he thought was an undercover law enforcement officer who was following him when he landed at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Virginia, just outside Washington.
“I can’t tell you I wanted to go to D.C. to get arrested; that sounds weird,” Tarrio said, but explained he wanted to travel to Washington to “get this over with” and to set up a “circus tent” and use it as a “marketing ploy.”
Tarrio said he “messaged a million people on the plane,” but he said “that one right there” — Lamond — was not one of them.
“I can say with 100% certainty Shane Lamond did not tell me anything on that plane,” Tarrio said.
But prosecutors played a documentary video that showed Tarrio, as he was talking about when he found out a warrant for his arrest had been signed, saying, “He texted me in the air.” Tarrio said that after he saw that video, he was “pretty sure” he “sent a message to various places” during the flight.
Asked how people could believe that he was telling the truth now when he admitted lying to members of his own organization, Tarrio said that he did not “want to be in jail any longer” and that lying to his fellow Proud Boys as part of a marketing ploy was different from lying on the stand, under oath. Given Tarrio’s sentence, holding him in contempt would not necessarily have much of a deterrent effect.
Tarrio, who is in the custody of U.S. marshals until he is returned to the federal Bureau of Prisons, was wearing a green jumpsuit from a local jail in Alexandria, Virginia. A far-right website that frequently posts interviews and links to crowdfunding websites for Jan. 6 defendants posted an interview with him Wednesday; it was not clear where he was when that interview took place.
Tarrio repeatedly denied directly confessing to Lamond — or any Washington police officer — about having any involvement in the burning of the Black Lives Matter banner. He did, however, confess on his podcast and his Parlor account. “I confessed” and challenged law enforcement to “come arrest me,” Tarrio testified, denying it was a hate crime. Tarrio also said he sent a screenshot of his Parlor post to Lamond, explaining that communicating with law enforcement was key to his objective of keeping his fellow Proud Boys safe and that he had a similar relationship with law enforcement in other cities.
Tarrio, who missed his initial flight to Washington on Jan. 4 after, he said, he partied too much the night before, said he communicated with Lamond about his flight plans “multiple times.” “I was odd to me he kept asking me over and over again,” Tarrio testified.
Tarrio testified that Lamond was not a member of the Proud Boys but that he couldn’t remember whether Lamond told him he supported the group. “I have no idea whether he did or didn’t,” Tarrio said, even though prosecutors presented a message sent after the attack in which Lamond is alleged to have written, “Of course I can’t say it officially, but personally I support you all and don’t want to see your group’s name or reputation dragged through the mud.”
Questioned by the prosecution, Tarrio refused to confirm the authenticity of messages prosecutors said he exchanged with Lamond.
“Truly, I don’t want to be an a-hole about this,” Tarrio said before he said that he didn’t trust prosecutors to present accurate evidence and that he wouldn’t “under any circumstance” verify what was shown on screen. Tarrio also said he would not speak about the Proud Boys’ being in Washington on Jan. 6.
“Oh, you will here,” U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said. Tarrio then said he would assert his Fifth Amendment rights. “I’m not answering anything for Jan. 6. It’s just not happening,” he said.
“You do not get to pick and choose,” Jackson said as she ordered him to answer all questions. Tarrio argued that he had a “pending appeal,” and Jackson said it’s up to her, not Tarrio, what questions are relevant.
“We’ll agree to disagree,” Tarrio said with a smirk.
“You’re not in charge,” Jackson said before she called prosecutors and defense lawyers up to the bench to discuss how to move his testimony forward.
Tarrio eventually conceded that he was sure Proud Boys were in Washington and confirmed that he had been convicted of seditious conspiracy.
Tarrio said that when he and Lamond met for beers at The Dubliner near Union Station in December 2020, they didn’t discuss their personal lives, and he said his focus was mostly on security during protests the next month, since members of the Proud Boys had been stabbed, rather than on the burning of the banner.
“The banner was not as important as three of my guys getting stabbed,” Tarrio said. “Those days were really, really intense,” he testified, adding that his anxiety had “peaked” because he couldn’t control the crowds. He claimed he wanted a smaller group of Proud Boys for the inauguration because they had a lot of new members since the election who were “unruly.”
Lamond is expected to testify in his own defense at 1 p.m. Friday.