A Jan. 6 rioter who pleaded guilty to climbing through a broken window at the Capitol has been hired to work at the Pentagon. A Pentagon spokesman Joel Valdez, said in a statement that Mr. Irizarry “is a qualified, patriotic young professional, and we are proud to have him as a political appointee.”
President Trump pardoned Mr. Irizarry on Inauguration Day last year when Mr. Trump began his second term by granting blanket clemency to Jan. 6 rioters.
On Jan. 6, 2021, prosecutors said, Mr. Irizarry, a former student at the Citadel, a military college in South Carolina, entered the Capitol through a broken window on the Senate side, and roamed through the building armed with a metal pole. He found his way to a private conference room, where he was videotaped by one of his friends, Elliot Bishai, sitting in an armchair with the pole across his lap.
Mr. Irizarry, Mr. Bishai and a third man, Grayson Sherrill, ended up in the Capitol’s Rotunda, where they took photos and videos of one another climbing on statues, prosecutors said. While Mr. Irizarry was not charged with committing violence, he stayed on the Capitol grounds until after dusk, and later pleaded to a charge of federal trespassing.
After he was arrested in March 2021, Mr. Irizarry showed no remorse, prosecutors said, but tried instead to figure out who had turned him in to the authorities. He sent text messages to Mr. Bishai about
joining the Russian military if he could not eventually join the U.S. military.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/04/us/politics/pentagon-hires-jan-6-rioter.html
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