WEDNESDAY, MAY 25 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU B5
police riot shield — wanted to
change lawyers. Prosecutors have
wanted Tarrio and Pezzola to be
tried together with the others, cit-
ing their respective “central” and
“defining” roles in the case.
Separately prosecutors have
said they may charge several addi-
tional defendants, add charges, or
do both in Tarrio’s case, based in
part on additional devices of his
that were seized in March. But a
Friday deadline by which prosecu-
tors said they planned to act
passed without incident. A
spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s
office declined to comment on
Tuesday about whether that
meant additional charges were off
the table, citing secrecy of grand
jury matters.
In Tarrio’s indictment, prosecu-
tors pointed to his meeting with
Rhodes and other individuals
“known and unknown to the
grand jury,” adding that during the
30-minute encounter, “a partici-
TARRIO FROM B1 pant referenced the Capitol.” Pros-
ecutor Jason McCullough said the
video showed Tarrio “getting ant-
sy” to reestablish secure commu-
nications and “command and con-
trol” of the men he had selected
and who discussed “storming the
Capitol.”
In a May 18 bond hearing, Tar-
rio attorney Nayib Hassan said
that the video shows it was an
associate and not Tarrio who
asked to return to the hotel and
that Tarrio coincidentally met
Rhodes while looking for an attor-
ney to represent him.
“I just need to talk to her. This
guy has a good attorney, and it was
a 2A [Second Amendment] attor-
ney who got this guy off,” Tarrio
says on camera as he enters the
garage, without elaborating.
Rhodes has pleaded not guilty
to a separate indictment of con-
spiring with members of his group
to oppose by force President
Biden’s inauguration.
The video shows a female asso-
ciate greeting Tarrio upon retriev-
ing his effects from police. The
woman, a photographer following
the Proud Boys, calls to arrange an
urgent meeting with Rhodes’s
friend Kellye SoRelle, an attorney
for the Oath Keepers, who hap-
pened to be staying at the same
Phoenix Park Hotel as the photog-
rapher. Tarrio suggests they meet
in person.
While Tarrio introduced him-
self on camera to both Rhodes and
SoRelle, the camera crew was told
to step away and did not capture
audio of any substantive discus-
sions among the Oath Keepers
and Proud Boys heads in publicly
released clips.
The video captures more con-
versation between Tarrio and the
leaders of two other right-wing
pro-Trump groups: Macias, co-
founder of Vets for Trump, and
Gracia, a longtime Tarrio friend
and head of Latinos for Trump, a
Jan. 6 event organizer.
Hours before his flag-burning
incident on Dec. 12, Tarrio — who
also served as chief of staff forLatinos for Trump — Gracia and
other members of the group visit-
ed the White House. A White
House spokesman later described
the visit as a public tour and said
Tarrio did not meet with President
Donald Trump. Gracia previously
posted a photo on social media of
Tarrio meeting Donald Trump Jr.
and his girlfriend and campaign
adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle.
In the video on Jan. 5, Gracia
insists that Tarrio’s presence is
needed the following day and at-
tempts to give him cards on lan-
yards — “You need to be here
tomorrow” — before repeatedly
warning that his communications
with them must be kept secret
from law enforcement.
Gracia said she and her group’s
vice president had removed Tarrio
from an unspecified text message
chain believing his phone had
been compromised by police dur-
ing his arrest, because another
person had been messaging Tarrio
and getting “check marks like you
read it, and we knew it wasn’t you.”“I removed you for now, be-
cause I didn’t know if they were
downloading s--- or whatever....
Ozzy says get a new SIM card and
you can get a new phone before
you contact anyone,” Gracia said,
apparently referring to Ozzy Per-
ez-Cerezal, a Latinos for Trump
vice president and member of a
Miami Proud Boys chapter found-
ed by Tarrio.
Tarrio said police kept his
phone and laptop, but assured
Gracia the latter contained no po-
tentially sensitive information
and the former was either
“cleared” of sensitive content by
him before his arrest or could not
be accessed without two-step veri-
fication. He explained he was un-
der court order to leave the city but
intended to stay overnight in
Maryland where “a lot of my guys
are” before driving home to Mi-
ami, confirming, “I got a lot of stuff
to do tomorrow.”
“I need a communication de-
vice.... I can sign in with my thing
on your phone and type away,”Tarrio says in some of his first
remarks to the photographer in an
early sequence of the video. As he
is being driven into Maryland lat-
er that evening and shortly before
the video ends, he repeats to the
photographer, “I need access to
my Telegram, that’s why I need
your phone.”
It was not immediately clear
whether the released video clips
contained the basis for the indict-
ment’s allegation that a partici-
pant made a reference to t he Capi-
tol. One clip taken after Tarrio
asked for space to speak to SoRelle
records participants who spoke
within earshot of Tarrio’s conver-
sation, although his words were
inaudible. In the second group,
whose faces were not shown, a
woman refers to “the Great Reset”
and adds, “I need Trump to do the
right thing.” A man who accompa-
nied Rhodes to the meeting re-
sponds: “It’s inevitable what’s go-
ing to happen. We’ve just got to do
it as a team together, strong, hard
and fast.”Video released from meeting between right-wing leaders
BY PAUL DUGGANAntione Tuckson is not a law
enforcement officer. But when
police in Prince George’s County
encountered him outside a res-
taurant and charged him with
impersonating a deputy U.S. mar-
shal, he sure looked the part,
authorities say.
Tuckson was carrying a Glock
9mm pistol, handcuffs, a Taser
“and other police gear and was
accompanied by a dog wearing a
police-style vest,” federal pros-
ecutors wrote in a court filing
Friday. At the eatery, Tuckson had
tried to detain two women who
were disputing their bill, the
prosecutors wrote. When the
women defied his orders and left
the restaurant, according to the
court filing, Tuckson pursued
them — and called county police
for backup.
After meeting him on the
street, officers thought it was odd
that Tuckson had left his dog in
the restaurant. “Recognizing that
an on-duty canine never leaves
the assigned officer’s side,” the
officers “began investigating
Tuckson’s claim that he was a
Deputy U.S. Marshal,” the pros-
ecutors wrote. Tuckson, 38,
showed them a fake identifica-
tion card and badge, then tele-
phoned “a co-conspirator,” who
identified himself to the officers
as Tuckson’s supervisor in the
Marshals Service, prosecutors
wrote.
The story fell apart, though,
and he was arrested by the offi-
cers that day, March 6, on state
charges of illegal gun possession
and impersonating a law enforce-
ment officer. After the Marshals
Service conducted its own inves-
tigation, Tuckson was indicted by
a grand jury in U.S. District Court
in Maryland, where he made his
initial appearance Friday, plead-
ing not guilty to federal chargesof impersonating a U.S. govern-
ment officer and possessing a
firearm illegally.
His “fake U.S. Marshals identi-
fication card had an embedded
computer chip to resemble” a
genuine card issued by the Jus-
tice Department, according to the
court filing, in which the prosecu-
tors asked for Tuckson to be held
without bond pending prosecu-
tion. As of Monday, Tuckson had
not filed a response to that mo-
tion, according to online court
records. A judge referred his case
to the federal public defender’s
office for assignment of a defense
attorney.
In the Prince George’s case,
Tuckson, of Waldorf, was released
on bail in April. Michael Love-
lace, the lawyer representing him
in Prince George’s Circuit Court,
declined to comment Monday,
except to say that Tuckson has
not yet entered a plea in that case.
Although he has no convic-tions for impersonating a law
enforcement officer, Tuckson has
been accused or suspected of it in
the past, according to prosecu-
tors.
They wrote he was charged
with impersonating an officer in
West Virginia in 2006, but the
case was dismissed.
D.C. Superior Court records
show that Tuckson was charged
with illegal gun possession in the
District in 2009 and sentenced to
four years in prison. “Although
the case was ultimately over-
turned on appeal ... Mr. Tuckson
was initially arrested in that casebecause police believed he was
impersonating an officer,” the
federal prosecutors wrote in Fri-
day’s court filing.
“Specifically, when police en-
countered Mr. Tuckson, he was
driving a Chevy Impala outfitted
with dark windows, long anten-
nas, a police-style dash light, and
other features that made it ap-
pear to be an undercover police
vehicle,” prosecutors wrote.
In Charles County in 2018, the
prosecutors wrote, Tuckson
turned on the emergency lights in
his vehicle and stopped a fleeing
robbery suspect. He was notcharged with a crime in that
instance, and it is unclear wheth-
er authorities at the time knew
that he was not a law enforce-
ment officer.
Late last year, Tuckson regis-
tered the trademark “USMS Spe-
cial Services” in Maryland, then
identified himself as a deputy
marshal in persuading the Prince
George’s restaurant to hire him
for private security work, the
prosecutors wrote. As for the two
unhappy diners he allegedly tried
to detain, it’s unclear whether
their billing dispute was re-
solved.MARYLAND
U .S. marshal impersonator arrested after calling for backup, prosecutors say
freeze hiring for more than a
year. Since then, the council has
twice raised the police budget by
millions of dollars.)
“The mayor unfortunately is
fearmongering, which is the last
thing we need a mayor to do in a
city that is unsafe.” Robert White
shot back. “ ‘Streamline’ doesn’t
mean defund the police. You can
see my plan in black and white
... I say I’m going to do what the
Police Reform Commission
asked this mayor to do two years
ago. I’m going to do an analysis
of how many police we need.”
In response to a question from
Ford about a Pennsylvania Av-
enue Southeast dry cleaning
shop that was vandalized and
robbed, Trayon White spoke
about the need for city liaisons to
help business owners request aid
from the government and about
the need for youth services.
“As leaders in this city, we have
a divestment in youth and young
adult services in our community.
DEBATE FROM B1 And we wonder why our youth
are involved in crimes,” White
said.
Butler, similarly, answered the
question with a plan for 24-hour
recreation centers to construc-
tively occupy young people.
Only Bowser answered the
question about the shop by say-
ing D.C. police should more fre-
quently patrol the corner.
On schools
“If any of the council members
were mayor during this time, we
would likely still be doing virtual
learning,” Bowser said, noting
that Robert White proposed an
unsuccessful bill that would have
imposed constraints on when
schools could open based on
coronavirus case rates.
Robert White spoke of his plan
to make the state superintendent
of education independent from
the mayor’s office, and Bowser
again accused him of muddling
his message about whether he
supports mayoral control of D.C.
schools.“I think this is a seminal issue
of this campaign. I have to say I
have heard now council member
White have at least six different
descriptions of what he would do
with the schools,” Bowser said.
“As has happened many times
tonight, the mayor’s just flat
wrong. My answer for schools
has been consistent. More im-
portantly, what you see from me
is a sense of urgency,” Robert
White said. “You can’t tell me
we’re doing a good job.”
The back-and-forth, which
Butler jumped in to castigate as
“bickering” between “career poli-
ticians,” continued.
“I heard the statement ‘a sense
of urgency,’ but I also heard a
scattered view of how to get
things done,” Bowser responded.
“Moving boxes around on an
organizational chart, telling you
that you want an independent
superintendent, because? Be-
cause you had to just have a new
organization?... This is a bunch
of moving around boxes when we
need to be focused on investingin schools.”
Bowser also criticized Robert
White’s plan to open public
boarding schools as “telling par-
ents that we want to send the
government to raise your kids.”
White replied, “Every wealthy
family in this country can send
their child to a boarding school.
And you can’t tell me that some-
thing is good for the wealthy but
not good for everybody else.”On affordable housing
Bowser touted the money she
has put into the Housing Produc-
tion Trust Fund — more than
$1 billion over her two terms —
that has subsidized the creation
of thousands of new units of
designated affordable housing.
“Most residents understand
that spending money and solving
problems are different things,”
said Robert White, who turned to
his plan to convert downtown
office buildings into affordable
housing.
Trayon White also critiqued
Bowser’s trust fund spending.“First we have to start with an
investigation of where a billion
dollars has been spent in the last
10 years, because we don’t know
where the affordable housing is,”
he said. “The money has become
a slush fund for developers.”
Trayon White said the high
cost of housing has driven Black
residents to move out of the city.
“We are being forced out, and
gentrification is being engi-
neered by the government.”
Butler, who advocated ex-
panding rent control to cover
more recently constructed apart-
ment buildings, touched on simi-
lar themes of gentrification. He
said he would require that every
building developed by the gov-
ernment include space for a
minority-owned business such as
a coffee shop or an artist, to give
Black Washingtonians a leg up.On homelessness
Robert White criticized Bows-
er’s decision to forcibly remove
tent encampments where home-
less people were living, sayingthat if he were mayor, he could
have found housing for them —
as Bowser’s administration has
said that she did before clearing
encampments.
“If our mayor spent more time
talking to people who lived there
and less time talking to develop-
ers, maybe she would under-
stand,” White said.
In response, Bowser touted
her success at greatly reducing
the number of people who are
homeless in the District, espe-
cially families. “I have made it a
major platform of my entire time
in office to make homelessness
rare, brief and nonrecurring,”
she said.
She stood by her program of
offering people in tents housing
vouchers and then removing
their tents. “Council members
voted to stop it. They voted to
stop it,” she said.
“That’s not right,” Robert
White cut in. The council did
vote on a bill that would have
halted tent removals, but the bill
failed to pass.D.C. forum highlights di≠erences among mayoral candidates on key issues
BY SALVADOR RIZZOAn 18-year-old was fatally
stabbed during a large fight out-
side an Alexandria shopping cen-
ter Tuesday, police said.
A fight involving 30 to 50 people
broke out around midday outside
a McDonald’s at the Bradlee Shop-
ping Center, in the 3600 block of
King Street, police said. First re-
sponders transported an 18-year-
old man who was stabbed to the
hospital, where he later died, Alex-
andria police spokesman Marcel
Bassett said.
Alexandria City High School’s
principal, Peter Balas, identified
the victim as Luis Mejia Hernan-
dez, a student at the school.
“I am saddened to share with
you the news of the passing of one
of our Titan seniors from the Class
of 2022,” Balas said in a letter to
the school community and shared
through his social media. “[Luis]
will be greatly missed by the Titan
community especially in the Inter-
national Academy.”
David Davis, who witnessed the
brawl from outside one of the
shops, said dozens of high school
students quickly dispersed when
police arrived at the scene. Davis
was manning a stall for Law En-
forcement Against Drugs and Vio-
lence, a nonprofit, and had put up a
sign saying, “Stop school violence.”
He said a group of five male
students was chatting outside the
Starbucks when another young
man came up to them. After a brief
exchange, the young man told the
group, “Okay, you be right there.
My boy’ll fix that,” Davis said.
He said that less than five min-
utes later, he saw a group of young
people gathering at a bus stop.
“That’s where it all, you know,
started getting busy,” Davis said.
“They left from the bus stop, and I
guess the fight broke out from
there, ended up in the middle of
the parking lot.” He said he saw
some young women crying and
young men who appeared to be
hurt.
“I went to tell them, ‘Hey, man,
stay here. Stay away from all that,’ ”
Davis said. “My job was to try to
protect the ones I could protect.”
Alexandria police are investi-
gating and requested that anyone
with information contact the de-
partment at 703-746-4444. No ar-
rests have been made. The 18-year-old’s family was notified of his
slaying, Bassett said.
Alexandria City High School’s
nearby campuses were placed in
“secure the building” status on
Tuesday afternoon. Officials can-
celed after-school activities, and
students were escorted in small
groups to the exits, according to a
statement from school officials.
“All of a sudden, the cops just
came out from everywhere. It was
wild,” said Cindy Clemmer, of Al-
exandria, who said she was driv-
ing into the shopping center when
she saw “at least 20 kids” brawling.
Wednesday will be a virtual
learning day for students, Balas
said, to “allow our school commu-
nity the time and space to grieve
and process this loss.”
Police had been to the area for
violent incidents previously. In
September, a juvenile suffered a
gunshot wound after a fight broke
out, police said in a tweet. In Octo-
ber, a man was injured and a juve-
nile was arrested after another
fight, according to the news web-
site ALXnow.Hannah Natanson and Nicole Asbury
contributed to this report.VIRGINIA
Student fatally stabbed during brawl
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