DC police officer 'privately shared' internal information with Proud Boys leader: report

16 February 2023

Police officers were among the Washington, D.C. residents who were violently attacked when a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 in the hope of preventing the certification of now-President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. According to federal prosecutors for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the far-right groups that were involved in the Capitol insurrection included, among others, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and QAnon.

Yet activists who monitor far-right extremist groups have been warning about their efforts to ally themselves with members of law enforcement. According to the Associated Press, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was, in late 2020, fed information by an "intelligence officer" for the Metropolitan Police. The Miami-born Tarrio is facing federal seditious conspiracy charges along with four other members of the Proud Boys.

AP journalist Michael Kunzelman, in an article published on February 15, reports that Metropolitan Police Lt. Shane Lamond — according to the prosecution at Tarrio’s trial — gave Tarrio "internal information about law enforcement operations in the weeks before other members of his far-right extremist group stormed the U.S. Capitol."

Federal prosecutor Conor Mulroe, Kunzelman reports, "privately exchanged" messages with Tarrio "in the run-up to a mob’s attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021."

"Lamond, an intelligence officer for the city’s police department, was responsible for monitoring groups like the Proud Boys when they came to Washington for protests," the AP reporter explains. "Less than three weeks before the January 6 riot, Lamond warned Tarrio that the FBI and U.S. Secret Service were 'all spun up' over talk on an Infowars internet show that the Proud Boys planned to dress up as supporters of President Joe Biden on the Democrat’s inauguration day."

When Mulroe asked FBI special agent Peter Dubrowski — one of the witnesses at the trial — how common it is for police officers to share internal information in that way, Dubrowski replied, "I’ve never heard of it."

Tarrio, who lives in Florida, wasn’t among the Proud Boys members who was in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021. Tarrio, in fact, had been arrested on January 4, 2021 in connection with something unrelated to the Capitol insurrection: the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner taken from an African-American church during a December 2020 protest. Federal prosecutors, however, allege that Tarrio helped coordinate a seditious conspiracy.

Kunzelman reports, "In a message to Tarrio on December 25, 2020, Lamond said Metropolitan Police Department investigators had asked him to identify Tarrio from a photograph. He warned Tarrio that police may be seeking a warrant for his arrest. Later, on the day of his arrest, Tarrio posted a message to other Proud Boys leaders that said, ‘The warrant was just signed’…. Tarrio and his four lieutenants are charged with seditious conspiracy for what prosecutors said was a plot to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power and keep former President Donald Trump in the White House after the 2020 presidential election."

Read the Associated Press’ full report at this link.

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