A federal judge found former Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Shane Lamond guilty of obstruction of justice and lying to investigators regarding his leaks of confidential police information to the leader of the Proud Boys.
Lamond reportedly tipped off Enrique Tarrio, who is now serving a 22-year sentence for seditious conspiracy and other charges, about an impending arrest for vandalism. He resigned from the department in May 2023 after 23 years of service.
The former police official faced four charges, including one count of obstruction of justice and three counts of making false statements. Prosecutors provided evidence showing that he alerted Tarrio about a signed arrest warrant.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson convicted former Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Shane Lamond of obstructing justice and making false statements after a trial without a jury.
Sentencing was scheduled for April 3 after Lamond’s conviction on all four counts.
Lamond was charged with leaking information to former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio, who was then under investigation in the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner.
Tarrio eventually pleaded guilty to burning the banner stolen from a historic Black church in downtown Washington in December 2020.
Prosecutors alleged that Lamond was functioning as a “double agent” for the Proud Boys, a right-wing organization. He was accused of giving Tarrio “real-time updates” on the investigation into the banner burning. Lamond privately expressed support for the group in private text messages.
In one exchange, he said he can’t publicly support the group, but that he “personally” supported it and did not want to see its “name and reputation dragged through the mud,” according to NBC News.
Yet, during trial, Lamond insisted that he did not “support the Proud Boys” and that he was not “a Proud Boys sympathizer.”
The former official said his communications with Tarrio were part of his job as the head of the Metropolitan Police Department’s intelligence unit, which monitors groups it deems to be extremist. He claimed he never provided the group with confidential information.
President-elect Donald Trump has pledged on multiple occasions to issue pardons for the Jan. 6 defendants after he takes office.
President-elect Donald Trump’s recent “Meet the Press” interview has triggered concerns among allies and critics about his level of awareness of the details of the sprawling investigation into the Capitol attack that has produced hundreds of convictions in the nearly four years since Jan. 6.
Trump is weeks away from being sworn in, a day he has said that he’ll “most likely” begin immediately pardoning Jan. 6 defendants. “I’ll be looking at J6 early on, maybe the first nine minutes,” Trump told Time magazine. “We’re going to look at each individual case, and we’re going to do it very quickly, and it’s going to start in the first hour that I get into office. And a vast majority of them should not be in jail.”
The process for considering each case related to the J6 riot could take months as Trump has not indicated which types of defendants he plans to pardon or whether he would apply a blanket pardon to everyone charged with a crime related to the riot.