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On January 6, 2021, 19-year-old Elias Irizarry was among the members of a violent mob that stormed the White House and attempted to overturn the recent presidential election. He was found guilty of going against the law on the grounds of the state, and video from that day, show him entering through the window with an iron pole in his hand. Now he has access to sensitive national security information as a Department of Defense employee.
As part of his plea deal with then-President Biden’s Justice Department, Irizarry pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, and was sentenced to 14 days in jail. But like almost everyone else on January 6, he was completely pardoned when Donald Trump returned to office last year. Washington Post information this week where Irizarry, now 25 years old, works in the Pentagon’s Special Operations and Subsidiary Crisis office. He’s tasked with protecting the country from terrorist threats—but he himself participated in an attack on the U.S. government more than five years ago. His move is in line with Trump’s ongoing efforts to rebrand the January 6 rebels as “patriots” acting in support of the cause of justice, and reflecting the tendency of the White House to reward illegal actions carried out in the service of the president and his agenda.
At the time of the riots, Irizarry was a freshman at the Citadel, a public military academy in South Carolina. He was suspended from school after his guilty plea; after apologizing for his involvement in the riots at his 2023 sentencing, he reapplied and was accepted. The judge even wrote him a recommendation letter. Irizarry ran for Congress in 2024, and his campaign website he explained that he had “seen the good, the bad, and the ugly truth of America.” (He lost in the Republican primary, though he did capture 28 percent of the lot.) But is the fact that Irizarry apologized, and that the DOD speaker says that he believes Irizarry is qualified, does that mean he should have access to the nation’s most closely guarded secrets?
Part of the reason government jobs are so coveted is that many jobs in the public service are rewarded with stability, pensions, and other benefits. These positions can come with a lot of responsibility—and while it’s unclear what Irizarry’s motivations are for taking on this particular role, his hiring is part of a concerning trend. He’s not the first indictee on Jan. 6 to hold office in the Trump administration: Jared Wise, who was caught on tape urging rioters to “kill” Capitol Police officers, was until recently a Justice Department employee. He he resigned because he believed he could not “fully expose the FBI and DOJ abuses against the J6 defendants” from within the federal government. A former FBI agent himself, Wise was assigned specifically to the DOJ’s Weapons Task Force, which was created to investigate alleged abuses of prosecutorial power during the Biden administration. (My colleague Quinta Jurecic has he argued (that the project has inadvertently shed light on the abuses of the Trump administration.)
One big thing about Irizarry’s career: his security clearance. All positions in the Special Operations and Low Level Conflicts office require a top secret clearance, according to Washington Postwhich is usually given only after a strict vetting process. (The Pentagon did not respond to my questions about the specifics of Irizarry’s role.) In part because Americans with security clearances can be targets of foreign agents, they are routinely advised to watch for “insider threats”—red flags among co-workers who might potentially destroy classified information, voluntarily or under duress. One of them is telling, as my colleague Tom Nichols is writtenit is hostility to the US government. Prosecutors alleged that, in the months following Jan. 6, Irizarry sent a message to another soldier about the possibility of joining the Russian military if the United States did not accept him.
The Trump administration is still trying to make history on January 6. In November of last year, Trump also announced a symbolic amnesty for the dissidents who conspired to keep him in office. A month later, Trump to be forgiven Tina Peters, the Colorado county clerk who was convicted of election interference in 2024. The order had no legal significance—she was only convicted at the state level, Peters was beyond the power of the president—but ultimately, Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polishe did what Trump couldn’t, overturning Peters’ prison sentence. Immediately after his release, he went on Steve Bannon’s podcast and suggested he be jailed for exposing a Democratic conspiracy to steal the election.
The decision to pardon those involved on January 6, and to give some rebels jobs in the government, sends a message that crimes can be forgiven as long as they meet the goals of those in power. Government agencies develop public trust in part by demonstrating that they employ the right people; not long ago, Irizarry would have been a safety hazard. In this regime, honesty is the most important attribute.
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Today’s news
- A federal judge repealed several immigration policies of the Trump administrationincluding the suspension of asylum applications and immigration benefits, ruling that the policies left illegal immigrants in the United States in an “uncertain legal quandary.” The judge wrote that the policies violated immigration law and “impeded the lives of many people—simply because of their country of birth.”
- The Senate passed a $70 billion immigration enforcement package which will fund ICE and the Border Patrol through the remainder of President Trump’s second term.
- United States it added 172,000 jobs in May with unemployment remaining at 4.3 percent, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, underscoring the stability of the labor market despite rising inflation and economic disruptions linked to the Iran war.
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