Shane Lamond, the former head of the Metropolitan Police intelligence unit in Washington who was indicted last year for feeding information to a Proud Boys leader, was found guilty on Monday.
Proud Boys chief Enrique Tarrio is serving 22 years after being convicted of seditious conspiracy in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
U.S. Judge Amy Berman Jackson returned the verdict on Monday finding Lamond guilty of four counts, including obstruction of justice and three counts of lying to investigators, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. The verdict followed a bench trial which featured contentious testimony from Tarrio, who insisted that he’d been contemporaneously lying to his fellow Proud Boys about receiving information from a source in the Metropolitan Police Department.
Prosecutors argued during the trial that Lamond had become a “double agent” for the Proud Boys, saying he had tipped off Tarrio that there was a warrant out for his arrest in connection with the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner during Tarrio’s prior trip to Washington with the Proud Boys.
“I can’t tell you I wanted to go to D.C. to get arrested; that sounds weird,” Tarrio said on the stand, but explained he wanted to travel to Washington two days before Jan. 6 to “get this over with” and to set up a “circus tent” to use his arrest as a “marketing ploy.”
Matthew Graves, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, said federal prosecutors proved at trial that 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.” Lamond, Graves said, was supposed to play a critical role in keeping the community safe, and his “violation of the trust placed in him put our community more at risk and cannot be ignored.”
David Sundberg, FBI assistant director in charge of the Washington Field Office, noted that Lamond took an oath to faithfully execute the law.
“Instead, he broke the law by providing confidential information to a source, obstructing an investigation into that source, and lying to federal investigators,” Sundberg said. “His conviction is a testament to the FBI’s work to bring public officials to justice for abusing their positions of power and trust.”
Donald Trump has vowed to begin pardoning Jan. 6 defendants when he takes office in less than a month. It is unclear if Tarrio is among the more than 1,500 defendants charged and more than 1,100 defendants convicted who could receive a pardon, and sources in both the Jan. 6 and law enforcement communities told NBC News that it’s clear Trump is not read in on the details of the cases.
Lamond’s defense said that his communications with Tarrio were a part of his job, but prosecutors produced evidence in which Lamond wrote of his affinity for the Proud Boys, even after the Jan. 6 attack.
“Of course I can’t say it officially,” Lamond wrote, according to prosecutors, “but personally I support you all and don’t want to see your group’s name or reputation dragged through the mud.”
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