Pentagon hires Jan. 6 rioter for sensitive special operations role
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/06/04/jan-6-rioter-sensitive-pentagon-special-operations-role/90406695007/
Pentagon hires Jan. 6 rioter for sensitive special operations role
Elias Irizarry, a 19-year-old Citadel cadet in 2021 Capitol attack, is reportedly assigned to the Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict office
Josh MeyerWASHINGTON – The Trump administration has appointed a convicted and pardoned Jan. 6 rioter to a Pentagon job in the office overseeing top-secret counterterrorism and special operations matters.
Elias Irizarry, a military college cadet who was 19 at the time of the 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol, has been assigned to the Pentagon's Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict office, an agency spokesman told USA TODAY on June 4. It was first reported by The Washington Post on June 2.
The Post followed up June 4 with a story saying Irizarry was filmed for more than five minutes during the riot launched by President Donald Trump's supporters as he moved through restricted grounds and climbed through a broken window, holding a metal pole, to enter the Capitol.
“Mr. Elias Irizarry is a qualified, patriotic young professional, and we are proud to have him as a political appointee at the Department of War,” Acting Press Secretary Joel Valdez said in a June 2 post on X in response to the initial story by The Post.
The office's portfolio includes the kinds of “irregular” warfare conducted by special operations units, such as the Navy SEALs, counterterrorism, embassy security, personnel recovery and hostage rescue, according to its website. It’s overseen by Derrick Anderson, a former Army Green Beret team leader.
Everyone on the team of about 40 people assigned to the office must have a top-secret security clearance, The Post said.
Valdez confirmed Irizarry's role at the special operations office to USA TODAY on June 4, but declined to respond to emailed questions about who hired Irizarry, what role he is playing there, if he has a national security clearance needed to handle classified matters and whether he underwent the traditionally arduous process of gaining such a clearance.
"I have nothing further to provide beyond the statement I gave," he said, referencing the post on X.
Critics, including Democratic lawmakers, have said Irizarry’s hiring raises concerns because of the office’s sensitive portfolio and Irizarry’s admitted role in the Capitol breach.
“Why is an insurrectionist rioter handling counterterrorism while we’re at war? Or at all?” Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minnesota, said in a June 3 X post.
What did Irizarry do on Jan. 6?
Court records show that at the time of the riot, Irizarry was a freshman at The Citadel, a public military college in South Carolina, and serving as a cadet in the Civil Air Patrol along with another person who was charged for conduct during the Jan. 6 attack.
Irizarry, of Fort Mill, South Carolina, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds. He was sentenced in 2023 to 14 days in jail, according to court records and media reports. Irizarry told a judge at sentencing that he had brought “great shame” on himself as a result of his conduct, and called Jan. 6 one of the darkest episodes in modern American history.
After traveling to Washington with two other men, Irizarry attended Trump’s rally on the Ellipse, where the president urged supporters to “fight like hell (or) you’re not going to have a country anymore. So we are going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue … and we are going to the Capitol.”
Irizarry then joined the mob that breached police lines and broke into the Capitol as members of Congress were trying to certify Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
After he was arrested in March 2021, Irizarry showed no remorse, prosecutors said, but instead tried to figure out who had turned him in to authorities, The New York Times reported June 4. He sent text messages to a fellow cadet charged in the riot, Elliot Bishai, “about joining the Russian military if he could not eventually join the U.S. military.”
Irizarry also took part in a group chat titled “Civil War,” in which he discussed “using small planes to cross borders undetected,” the Times reported, citing prosecutors in the case.
A 'singular flawed decision'
The Citadel suspended Irizarry after his guilty plea, and he later returned and graduated, according to local media reports.
The judge in his federal case, Tanya Chutkan, had a different take on his sense of remorse, writing to the admissions office at the Citadel to ask officials to give him a second chance.
“I ask that you look beyond Mr. Irizarry’s past mistakes, for which he has demonstrated genuine remorse, defer to his exceptionally positive history, and allow him the opportunity to prove that the sum of his character extends beyond a singular flawed decision,” Chutkan wrote on June 1, 2023. “Although Mr. Irizarry’s actions were serious and were dealt with as such, it is important to weigh his youth and his susceptibility to influence.”
When local reporter Tom Novelly called Irizarry for comment about him being kicked out of the Citadel’s Republican Society after Jan. 6, “He gave the phone to his mom,” Novelly said in a June 2 X post.
Irizarry ran in 2024 as a Republican candidate for South Carolina House District 43 but lost the primary by a wide margin.
Trump later issued a blanket pardon that included Irizarry and hundreds of other Jan. 6 defendants at the outset of his second term.
Why are critics concerned?
Democratic lawmakers say Irizarry’s appointment adds to a broader debate over how Trump’s second administration is treating Jan. 6 defendants, including those moving into government jobs tied to law enforcement, intelligence and defense.
In an unrelated move, the Department of Justice hired Jared Wise, a former FBI supervisory special agent charged with entering the Capitol unlawfully and cheering violence against police protecting the building on Jan. 6, according to court records.
Wise later allegedly encouraged rioters attacking police officers to “kill ‘em,” according to court records.
But Wise was later hired as a senior adviser for the Justice Department, ABC News first reported in July 2025.
On April 2, following media coverage of his DOJ job, he resigned, saying in an X post, “I returned to Washington to fully expose the abuses by the FBI and DOJ against J6 defendants, but it became clear that this will only happen from outside of government. So I left and will do so.”
Irizarry did not immediately respond to questions sent by USA TODAY via text and email.
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