A retired Metropolitan Police Department officer was found guilty Monday of lying to authorities about tipping off Proud Boys then-national chair, Enrique Tarrio, that he was under investigation, The Hill reported. Lt. Shane Lamond will be sentenced on April 3.
Another Jan. 6 bombshell verdict came after Lamond was found guilty on three counts of making false statements to federal law enforcement officials and one count of obstructing justice. He had leaked to Tarrio that there was a warrant out for his arrest and lied to authorities about doing so.
The former officer was privy to the information as the supervisor of the police department's Homeland Security Bureau intelligence arm. Lamond had met Tarrio in 2019 in the course of investigating the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner.
However, prosecutors say Lamond would "surreptitiously provide information to Tarrio about law enforcement activity relating to Proud Boys’ activities in Washington, D.C." after the 2020 election and Jan. 6, 2021 incursion at the U.S. Capitol. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson found Lamond guilty of this reverse arrangement.
The court found that Lamond's role was the opposite of what it should have been. "As proven at trial, Lamond turned his job on its head — providing confidential information to a source, rather than getting information from him — lied about the conduct, and obstructed an investigation into the source," a statement from U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves said.
"The intelligence gathering role that Lamond was supposed to play is critical to keeping our community safe. His violation of the trust placed in him put our community more at risk and cannot be ignored," he added.
Both Lamond and Tarrio testified at the trial and denied that the officer was feeding the subject of the investigation any information. Lamond was tasked with questioning Tarrio about a BLM banner that went missing and was burned from a Black church.
Tarrio was the department's main suspect in the incident. However, the judge believes that instead of finding out whether Tarrio was involved in the December 2020 incident, Lamond was tipping him off about the investigation and continued to do so.
"It was the other way around," the judge decided after hearing their testimony. According to the Associated Press, Tarrio eventually pleaded guilty to burning the banner.
Evidence submitted at the trial proved that Lamond provided Tarrio with information, including news of his imminent arrest. "Similarly, the defendant affirmatively advised Mr. Tarrio in a written message that he was being asked to identify him for a warrant, a warning obviously in contemplation of the subsequent prosecution and with obvious ramifications for it," prosecutors claimed.
Later, after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, Lamond continued to tip off Tarrio. "Of course I can’t say it officially, but personally I support you all and don’t want to see your group’s name and reputation dragged through the mud," he said in a message.
The men were discussing whether the Proud Boys would be implicated in the incursion at the Capitol. Tarrio was not in Washington, D.C., during the incident. Still, he was sentenced to 22 years in prison for his part in organizing the uprising, which prosecutors claimed was an effort to keep then-President Donald Trump in office despite the outcome of the 2020 election.
For his part, Lamond claims this friendliness was an effort to ingratiate himself with Tarrio to receive information. "I don’t support the Proud Boys, and I’m not a Proud Boys sympathizer," Lamond insisted.
Regardless of how Lamond felt about the Proud Boys or Tarrio, his job was to carry out the mission of his police department. He failed to do his job and then lied about it to officials, which makes his convicted justified.
