Proud Boys, Oath Keepers leaders return to DC courthouse — as spectators
When Stewart Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio stepped into Washington, D.C.'s federal courthouse Friday, they were wearing jeans instead of jumpsuits.
The leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys were once described by federal judges as the uniquely dangerous instigators of a Jan. 6, 2021, conspiracy to stop the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. Rhodes received an 18-year sentence, Tarrio a 22-year sentence, the lengthiest of all Jan. 6 defendants.
On his first day of his second term, Trump erased their prison terms when he granted a sweeping reprieve to the more than 1,500 people charged or convicted for storming the Capitol nearly five years ago.
Now, the men stood in a hallway of the very building that had once condemned them to decades in prison, bantering with a small band of supporters and preparing to stare down a federal judge as she sentenced a Tarrio associate, former D.C. police officer Shane Lamond.
Rhodes and Tarrio say they attended Lamond's sentencing to show solidarity with a man they think Trump should pardon. Lamond was convicted of lying to federal investigators and his own colleagues to protect Tarrio from an investigation into his burning of a Black Lives Matter flag in the weeks before Jan. 6.
Lamond had been cultivating Tarrio as a source, but U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson found that the roles had reversed: Tarrio pumped Lamond for information about the flag-burning probe while Lamond eagerly doled out details of his colleagues' work — and then lied about it. Jackson sentenced Lamond to 18 months in prison and scolded him for shaming his badge and department. Tarrio, who was still in prison at the time, testified in Lamond's defense, for a combative session that Jackson described Friday as 'bizarre.'
Lamond's sentencing makes him one of the few figures connected — even tangentially — to Jan. 6 to face criminal consequences in the second Trump term. While the men prosecutors and judges labeled the masterminds of the attack sat liberated in the public gallery, Lamond learned he is slated to go to prison in August. In fact, Trump's Justice Department asked Jackson to incarcerate Lamond for four years, a request the judge rejected as 'excessive.'
Afterward, Rhodes and Tarrio stood outside the courthouse and called on Trump to pardon Lamond — as well as the dozen Jan. 6 defendants like Rhodes who did not receive pardons but instead had their sentences commuted. Joining them was Ivan Raiklin, a longtime Trump ally who has called for retribution against those who targeted Jan. 6 defendants and has demanded investigations of the leadership of the Capitol Police.
Tarrio, who has been seen with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in recent weeks, said he didn't directly press the president to grant pardons and declined to describe their conversation, which he said was 'brief.'
'I'm not going to go into detail,' he said, a lit Marlboro in his hand. 'It was a very brief encounter.'
Several of the prosecutors who led the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers prosecutions have since been demoted or left the Justice Department altogether. Both men, however, expressed some frustration that the Trump administration had not more forcefully come down on Biden-era prosecutors and in fact still employed some of them. Rhodes called directly on the new interim U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro to purge more Jan. 6 prosecutors.
'I know she just started,' Rhodes said, 'but why are these guys still working for her?'
In fact, one of the prosecutors who led the team that put Rhodes in prison attended Lamond's sentencing, taking a seat in the public gallery just 5 feet from his former adversary.
Rhodes called the close encounter with the prosecutor a 'bizarre experience.'
'He's like 'Oh, nice to see you,'' Rhodes said. 'I was like, 'Not nice to see you.''
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