Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was in constant contact with a police officer leaking inside information about police operations for weeks in the lead-up to the Capitol riot, according to messages shown during Tarrio’s trial. Less than three weeks before Jan. 6, Metropolitan Police Lt. Shane Lamond, an intelligence officer whose role was to monitor groups like the Proud Boys, warned Tarrio that the FBI and Secret Service were “all spun up” over right-wing rumors that the Proud Boys were going to show up to Joe Biden’s inauguration dressed up as supporters. On Dec. 18, 2020, Lamond texted Tarrio to let him know investigators had been asking if the Proud Boys were racist. Lamond told them the group had Black and Latino members so it’s “not a racist thing.” A week before, he’d texted Tarrio about having an “in-person conversation over a beer” to discuss police’s “general consensus” on the far-right group because “that’s too complicated for a text answer.” And in a Christmas Day 2020 message, Lamond alerted Tarrio that police might be seeking a warrant for his arrest. Tarrio and four other Proud Boys leaders are charged with seditious conspiracy over their alleged role to prevent the transfer of power following the 2020 election.
