A man who breached the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 now reports for work inside one of the Pentagon's most secretive offices.
Elias Irizarrypleaded guilty to a federal charge after he climbed through a broken Capitol window holding a metal pole, served 14 days in jail, and later told a judge he had shamed his country. Five years on, the Trump administration has placed him in the Defense Department's Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict office, the unit that oversees counterterrorism, hostage rescue, embassy security, and the recovery of captured personnel.
The appointment, first reported byThe Washington Poston 2 June 2026, has set off internal alarm and a combative defence from the Pentagon.
Court records lay out what Irizarry did that day. He was a 19-year-old freshman at The Citadel, a public military college in South Carolina, and a Civil Air Patrol cadet when he drove to Washington with two other men.
Prosecutors said he climbed through a shattered Capitol window while holding a metal pole, though he never struck anyone, as thePost and Courier reportedfrom his sentencing. One of his travelling companions, Grayson Sherrill, struck a police officer and later received a seven-month sentence.
He pleaded guilty in October 2022 to a single misdemeanour of entering and remaining in a restricted building, an offence under 18 U.S.C. 1752. In March 2023, US District Judge Tanya Chutkan sentenced him to 14 days in jail and a £370 ($500) fine, a token share of the more than £2 million ($2.7 million) in damage inflicted on the Capitol, according tolocal court coverage. The Citadel suspended him, readmitted him in 2023, and he graduated the following year.
Irizarry did not minimise his conduct at the time. He called 6 January 'the largest attack on our democracy since the Civil War' and told the court he was ashamed, asThe Hill reported. In a letter to the judge, he wrote that he had brought 'great shame upon myself, my family, and, unfortunately, my country,'NBC News reported. President Trump pardoned him in January 2025, alongside more than 1,500 other 6 January defendants, and Irizarry had earlierfiled to runas a Republican for a South Carolina state House seat.
The office Irizarry joined sits within the Pentagon's policy directorate and carries unusual weight. The Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict office oversees the use of special operations forces in counterterrorism and counterproliferation, among other missions, and it monitors highly classified special access programmes.
He works in its roughly 40-person irregular warfare and counterterrorism section, whose portfolio reaches embassy security, hostage rescue, personnel recovery, and other delicate operations.
Washington Post: Elias Irizarry, a convicted Jan. 6 rioter, has been hired by the Trump administration to work in a Pentagon office that oversees highly classified military operations, according to four people familiar with the matter.The hire has raised alarm among staff, who…pic.twitter.com/34zwHxwSi1
Source: International Business Times UK
