The Trump administration has hired a convicted January 6th rioter to work inside the Pentagon, in an office that manages classified military operations, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing four people close to the matter. 

Elias Irizarry, 24, was appointed to a post in the Defense Department’s Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, according to the Washington Post. 

“In the case of rescue/extraction missions, it can place our special operators in some of the most complex and dangerous environments we ask of them,” one person familiar with Irizarry’s hiring told the Washington Post. “To put someone so junior and new to DOD, and with such a checkered background, into such a sensitive portfolio raises serious questions for leadership.”

The report noted that it is unclear who within the Trump administration appointed Irizarry to the post. 

Irizarry quickly disavowed his own involvement in the January 6 Capitol insurrection and apologized to the widows of several law enforcement officials who were killed that day, per the Washington Post.

“I am ashamed because I will always be a part of this disgrace,” Irizarry said at his sentencing in 2023. “January 6th represented something truly horrible; it was the largest attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

The Washington Post also noted that Irizarry was among the youngest of the January 6 defendants, and the judge in his case offered to help him reapply to the military school he had been attending before the event. In her 2023 recommendation letter, the report said, the judge noted Irizarry’s “youth and susceptibility to influence” at the time of the riot.

“As a judge and the mother of two sons in their twenties, I know that Mr. Irizarry is at a crucial inflection point for young adults,” she wrote, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Washington Post. 

After the Washington Post report was published, Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez responded to it on X/Twitter, defending the appointment of Elias Irizarry. 

"Mr. Elias Irizarry is a qualified, patriotic young professional, and we are proud to have him as a political appointee at the Department of War," Valdez wrote.

"Unlike Mr. Irizarry, the Washington Post does not care about national security, given its track record of low-tier reporters publishing and soliciting classified information that could hurt our nation on a daily basis."