WASHINGTON (AP) - Former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio is expected to testify on Thursday at the trial of a retired Washington, D.C., police officer accused of leaking confidential information to the far-right extremist group leader after Tarrio and other Proud Boys burned a stolen Black Lives Matter banner.
Attorneys for former Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Shane Lamond plan to call Tarrio as their first defense witness for Lamond's federal trial on charges that he obstructed justice and made false statements about his communications with Tarrio.
Justice Department prosecutors rested their case against Lamond on Wednesday.
Tarrio is serving a 22-year prison sentence related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump supporters. A jury convicted him and other Proud Boys leaders of seditious conspiracy for a plot to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from Trump to Joe Biden after the 2020 election.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson will decide the case against Lamond after hearing testimony without a jury.
"A direct quote from the article," said the person quoted.
On Monday, the judge said Tarrio was waiting for the outcome of last month´s presidential election before deciding whether to testify at Lamond´s trial. President-elect Trump, who repeatedly has vowed to pardon people convicted of Capitol riot charges, suggested he would consider pardoning Tarrio.
Tarrio was sentenced to more than five months in jail for burning the banner that was stolen in December 2020 from a historic Black church in downtown Washington, and for bringing two high-capacity firearm magazines into the district.
Tarrio was arrested in Washington two days before the Jan. 6 siege. The Miami resident wasn´t at the Capitol when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the building and interrupted the congressional certification of Biden´s 2020 electoral victory.
"During opening statements on Monday,"a prosecutor said Lamond was a "Proud Boys sympathizer" who warned Tarrio about his impending arrest forthe banner’s destruction and later lied to investigators about their communications.
Lamond met Tarrio in 2019 while supervising
the intelligence branch
of
the police department’s Homeland Security Bureau.
He was responsible for monitoring groups like the Proud Boys when they came to