Man convicted in Jan. 6 riot at US Capitol has a job at the Pentagon
[June 04, 2026]
By KONSTANTIN TOROPIN
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has given a man convicted in
the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol a job in the Pentagon's
policy office, according to officials and internal records.
“Mr. Elias Irizarry is a qualified, patriotic young professional, and we
are proud to have him as a political appointee," acting Pentagon press
secretary Joel Valdez said in a social media post this week.
Irizarry, whose appointment was first reported by The Washington Post,
was convicted in 2023 of a misdemeanor trespassing charge after a mob of
President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol. He showed
contrition when he was sentenced to two weeks behind bars in 2023, court
documents show.
Internal Pentagon records described to The Associated Press show that
Irizarry has been assigned to the office of the undersecretary of
defense for policy, which is tasked with providing national security
advice and support on military strategy and planning to the defense
secretary.
It was not clear from Valdez's statement how long Irizarry had been in
the post, and the Pentagon declined to provide more information.
Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee,
said on social media: “This administration thinks a convicted Jan. 6
rioter should be doing that kind of work?????”
Irizarry was a 19-year-old freshman at the Citadel military college in
South Carolina and a Civilian Air Patrol cadet when he joined the attack
on the Capitol, court documents show. He climbed through a broken
window, entered a conference room, carried a metal pole through the
Capitol and took photos before leaving the building, the records say.
“Because of his training, Irizarry was undoubtedly aware of the safety
threat posed by a mass of angry rioters to the Congressional members and
staff inside the building,” prosecutors said in a court filing.
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Irizarry pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor trespassing charge in
October 2022. In March 2023, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan
sentenced Irizarry to 14 days behind bars.
Before learning his sentence, Irizarry told the judge that he
brought “great shame upon myself, my family and even my country,”
according to a transcript.
“The idea of Americans being willing to fight other Americans and
tear down the very institutions that millions of other Americans
sacrificed and built and protect is horrible. It is something I have
to live with being a part of,” he said.
Irizarry is not the only convicted participant of the Jan. 6 riot to
find a job within the Trump administration.
Jared Wise, a former FBI agent charged with joining the crowd, was
hired at the Justice Department last year to serve as an adviser to
the department’s pardon attorney.
Wise was on trial in Washington when Trump returned to the White
House in January and immediately pardoned, commuted prison sentences
or ordered the dismissal of cases for all of the nearly 1,600 people
charged in the attack. The case against Wise was dismissed before
the jury reached a verdict.
He announced on social media in April that he had resigned from the
department, saying: “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.”
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Associated Press writers Michael Kunzelman and Eric Tucker
contributed to this report.
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