The J6 Rioter Now Working at the Pentagon

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.On January 6, 2021, 19-year-old Elias Irizarry was among the members of a violent mob that broke into the U.S. Capitol and attempted to overturn the recent presidential election. He was convicted of trespassing on government grounds, and videos from that day show him entering through a window with a metal pole in his hand. Now he may have access to sensitive national-security information as an employee of the Department of Defense.As part of his deal with then-President Biden’s Justice Department, Irizarry pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charge of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, and was sentenced to 14 days in jail. But as with almost all of the other January 6ers, he was fully pardoned on Donald Trump’s return to office last year. The Washington Post reported this week that Irizarry, now 25, works at the Pentagon’s Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict office. He’s been tasked with guarding the country against terrorist threats—but he himself participated in an attack on the U.S. government just over five years ago. His trajectory aligns with Trump’s ongoing effort to reframe the January 6 insurrectionists as “patriots” acting in support of a righteous cause, and reflects the White House’s tendency to reward illegal actions performed in the service of the president and his agenda.At the time of the riot, Irizarry was a freshman at the Citadel, a public military college in South Carolina. He was suspended from school after his guilty plea; after he apologized for his involvement in the riot 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 explained that he’d “truly seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of America.” (He los