The last January 6 case? Former DC police officer fighting conviction over contact with ex-Proud Boys leader

Almost all of the Biden administration’s January 6 prosecutions disappeared after President Donald Trump returned to office and issued sweeping pardons for more than 1,000 defendants. But one unusual case involving a former Washington, D.C., police lieutenant remains a live issue in federal court. Former Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Shane Lamond filed his final appellate brief on Wednesday, asking the […]

Almost all of the Biden administration’s January 6 prosecutions disappeared after President Donald Trump returned to office and issued sweeping pardons for more than 1,000 defendants. But one unusual case involving a former Washington, D.C., police lieutenant remains a live issue in federal court.

Former Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Shane Lamond filed his final appellate brief on Wednesday, asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to overturn his Biden-era conviction for obstructing an investigation and lying to federal agents about his communications with former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio.

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The appeal leaves Lamond fighting a conviction stemming from the same period that produced the Biden Justice Department’s January 6 prosecutions, even as Tarrio himself received clemency from Trump after being sentenced to 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy over January 6.

Lamond’s case also marks a rare occurrence where the Trump administration has remained aligned with a January 6-era prosecution brought during the Biden administration, as the president has decried the former president and his “radical left thugs” for ever pursuing the case.

Lamond’s case, however, is not technically a January 6 prosecution.

His charges centered on his communications with Tarrio during an MPD investigation into the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner stolen from a Washington church during a Proud Boys demonstration in December 2020. Tarrio pleaded guilty in July 2021 to burning the banner and possessing a restricted firearm, and he acknowledged that if he had known the banner was stolen from a church, he would not have set it ablaze.

Proud Boys Chairman Enrique Tarrio rallies in Portland, Oregon, Aug. 17, 2019. Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Shane Lamond has been arrested on charges that he lied about leaking confidential information to a leader of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group and obstructed an investigation after group members destroyed a Black Lives Matter banner in Washington, D.C. Lamond is scheduled to make his initial court appearance on Friday. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

Without an apparent nexus to the January 6 riot, Lamond was left outside Trump’s sweeping Jan. 20, 2025, clemency proclamation, which covered offenses related to the events at or near the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

What makes Lamond’s case even more notable is how prosecutors under this administration have shown no indications of letting him off the hook. In a July 17 filing with the D.C. Circuit, the Trump administration urged the appeals court to uphold the case brought against Lamond under former President Joe Biden’s administration.

“Lamond knew that his conduct was wrong and risked impeding MPD’s investigation and the impending prosecution,” according to a filing last month by Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary Fleming, who works under U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro. “His colleagues and superiors universally testified to that effect. Lamond’s attempts to cover his tracks by using Telegram and deleting messages further evidenced his knowledge of wrongdoing.”

The DOJ under the Biden administration indicted Lamond in May 2023, accusing the longtime police officer of using his position as supervisor of MPD’s Intelligence Branch to provide Tarrio with nonpublic information about the department’s investigation, including information about a warrant for Tarrio’s arrest.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson convicted Lamond following a seven-day bench trial in December 2024 of one count of obstruction and three counts of making false statements.

Jackson sentenced Lamond in June 2025 to 18 months in prison, below the four years prosecutors requested. By that point, Trump was back in office, and Tarrio had been freed through the president’s January 6 clemency proclamation.

Lamond has since been released from prison and is currently on home confinement. He is expected to transition to supervised release soon, as his appeal continues.

But his attorneys argued in the new filing that the government stretched both the obstruction and false-statement laws beyond their proper reach.

In Wednesday’s reply brief, his defense attorneys Andrew Goldsmith and Reno Varghese argued the Washington, D.C., obstruction statute used against Lamond does not apply to a police investigation before criminal charges or judicial proceedings have begun. The defense further argues that the phrase “due administration of justice” has historically referred to judicial or similar proceedings, rather than an ordinary pre-charge police investigation.

The defense also argues Jackson improperly relied on alleged violations of MPD policies to find Lamond acted “corruptly,” even though the judge acknowledged those internal rules did not carry the force of law.

Lamond’s attorneys separately attacked his three false-statement convictions, arguing two were based on vague questions that investigators later treated as categorical statements and a third depended on speculation about a message that was never recovered.

That final count concerns the government’s allegation that Lamond told Tarrio that an arrest warrant had been signed. The government has acknowledged that no such message was recovered, according to the filing. Lamond argues prosecutors instead stacked inferences about the contents of communications between the two men.

The defense also pointed to evidence it says undermines the Biden DOJ’s portrayal of Lamond as an officer secretly working to protect Tarrio.

According to the brief, Lamond helped investigators identify Tarrio from photographs, authenticated Tarrio’s voice after he discussed the banner burning on a podcast, and later supplied the flight information that investigators used to arrest him.

“Someone trying to conceal Tarrio’s involvement would not repeatedly furnish investigators the evidence to identify, locate, and arrest him,” Lamond’s attorneys wrote in defense of their client, conducting his required duties as a law enforcement officer.

In that respect, Lamond was not always viewed in a sympathetic light by Trump supporters, given his initial intent to help the investigation into Tarrio. Yet the former Proud Boys leader now stands affirmatively in his corner, hoping the president would be willing to offer him relief in his legal battle.

The unusual posture of the case has left Lamond as one of the few defendants with ties to the January 6 investigations still litigating a Biden-era conviction after Trump effectively ended the government’s Capitol riot prosecutions.

Lamond has also sought a presidential pardon through U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin’s office. Unlike Tarrio and the defendants whose convictions directly arose from the Capitol riot, however, Lamond’s underlying obstruction charge concerned the separate December 2020 banner-burning investigation.

FORMER DC POLICE CHARGED WITH OVERTIME FRAUD ARE HONORED ON CONGRESS’S JAN. 6 PLAQUE

His attorneys are asking the D.C. Circuit to reverse all four convictions and enter judgments of acquittal or, alternatively, vacate the convictions.

Oral arguments have not yet been scheduled, though the case could reach a D.C. Circuit panel early next year.

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