The trial of Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio over his alleged role in the January 6 Capitol Hill riot has taken some odd twists and turns thus far. That pattern continued this week when his attorney introduced text messages showing that Tarrio had been in regular communications with a D.C. Metropolitan Police officer for more than a year prior to the riot. He had regularly exchanged information with Shane Lamond, a seasoned veteran of the D.C. Police. The texts reveal that Tarrio answered questions and shared the group’s plans, with Lamond passing the information on to his superiors and sharing it with the Capitol Hill Police as well. It’s unclear how receptive the court will be to this argument, but this revelation certainly raises some interesting questions. (Raw Story)

The leader of the far-right Proud Boys revealed at his trial text messages showing “regular contact” with a Metropolitan Police officer in Washington, D.C. in the 15 months before the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, reported The Washington Post on Friday.

“Enrique Tarrio, then chairman of the far-right extremist group, repeatedly shared outlines of members’ plans in D.C. and elsewhere at the request of Shane Lamond, a 22-year veteran of the D.C. police department, according to text exchanges read by Tarrio’s defense in his trial on seditious conspiracy charges with four other Proud Boys leaders,” reported Spencer S. Hsu. “Tarrio argues that his relationship with Lamond showed there was no Proud Boys conspiracy to oppose police or federal authority, or plan to disrupt Congress’s confirmation of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory on Jan. 6. Exchanges highlighted by the defense show Lamond forwarded his information to his D.C. police command, a Virginia State Police contact, and even U.S. Capitol Police.”

Prosecutors are pointing out that most (but not all) of the text exchanges took place before plans for the January 6 rally took shape, so there probably would have been little of interest to the police. They also note that the online relationship between Tarrio and the officer had the appearance of being “inappropriate.”

I’m not sure what this really does for Tarrio’s defense. After all, Lamond wasn’t acting covertly. Tarrio knew he was speaking to a police officer. So even if the Proud Boys were planning something illegal, why would he give that information to a cop? And if they were planning an attack and that information had been passed on to the Capitol Hill Police, how were they so woefully unprepared when the riot broke out?

The other possibility is that there really weren’t any such plans among the Proud Boys and the entire riot was spontaneous, as most defendants have repeatedly said. But if that’s the case, it’s pretty hard to make a seditious conspiracy charge stick and that’s one of the more serious charges Tarrio faces.

If the court is honestly interested in getting to the truth of the matter and not just throwing the book at Tarrio as hard as they can, they should probably get Shane Lamond on the stand under oath. What was the nature of his relationship with Tarrio? Was he in touch with any other members of the Proud Boys or different groups that wound up traveling to Washington?

We previously learned that the FBI had been embedding people with the Proud Boys. Now we find out that a cop was texting one of the group’s leaders more often than a couple of teenagers who are dating. How could the Proud Boys have ever gotten away with anything without law enforcement knowing about it? Something here absolutely doesn’t smell right. If any of the Proud Boys actually took part in property destruction or assaults on law enforcement officers on January 6, then they should be dealt with like any other rioter. But it really sounds like the courts are trying to make an example out of the Proud Boys, and that’s not how justice is supposed to work.