Convicted in Capitol riot, now he works in SC State House. How this page is seeking ‘redemption’

Elias Irizarry sported a red “Make America Great Again” ball cap on Jan. 6, 2021, when he and thousands of others joined a now-infamous mob that sought to disrupt a joint session of Congress voting to confirm the 2020 presidential election results.

Today, he sports a blazer and tie, clocking in as one of more than 100 young pages working part-time in the South Carolina Legislature, helping 170 lawmakers run their myriad day-to-day functions.

Irizarry, who was suspended from South Carolina military college The Citadel after he pleaded guilty in October to a misdemeanor charge for his involvement in the U.S. Capitol riot, has been working for the South Carolina House of Representatives as a page since Jan. 9, assigned to the agriculture and natural resources committee.

The 21-year-old is on a journey of redemption. In court in March, he renounced what he now calls the “crazy insurrectionists” who sought to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power and admitted to making what he calls “the worst mistake of my life.”

“I would like to move on with my life,” Irizarry told The State Media Co. Thursday before politely making it clear he prefers a zone of privacy but was willing to respond to questions in writing.

Sponsoring him at the State House is state Rep. David O’Neal, a York County Republican and former mayor of Tega Cay, who spent 20 years in the U.S. Army — military service whose values he is looking to impart on Irizarry, along with character traits such as hard work and time management.

“He’s a good kid. He made a mistake,” O’Neal told The State, noting Irizarry had a tough time growing up and was sometimes homeless. “And we can all use redemption sometimes, you know, and a second chance, and this kid is worth saving. He’s just that good of a kid.”

Irizarry is one of 20 South Carolinians who have been charged with involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Then a 19-year-old freshman, on Jan. 5, 2021, Irizarry traveled to Washington with friend Elliot Bishai and Grayson Sherrill, an acquaintance, to attend then-President Donald Trump’s rally the next day. Trump, now a 2024 candidate for president, made false claims of a stolen election and urged supporters to march to the U.S. Capitol, where Congress was set to certify the 2020 election results in favor of now-President Joe Biden.

In the wake of the riot, evidence against Irizarry published in Washington’s federal court included photographs of him on top of the Capitol with a metal pipe. In court, Irizarry admitted that he entered the Capitol through a broken window after passing barricades and going through fencing outside. He climbed on statues and took pictures inside with others. He left the Capitol after 27 minutes.

“Did you know those measures were meant to keep you out?” Judge Tanya Chutkan asked Irizarry at his October 2022 plea hearing.

“Yes, your honor,” said Irizarry, who pleaded guilty to entering and remaining in a restricted area.

Chutkan, an Obama appointee, sentenced Irizarry to 14 days in prison, which he likely will serve in the near future.

Irizarry, who was in JROTC at Fort Mill’s Nation Ford High School and was an honor student at The Citadel, was South Carolina’s youngest Jan. 6 Capitol defendant and the only college student. He was suspended from The Citadel after his conviction.

The Citadel declined to comment for this story.

O’Neal, who worked for U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman as his 5th Congressional District director, said he’s known Irizarry and his mother for about five or six years and had previously connected Irizarry with a job as a busboy at the Tega Cay country club restaurant.

Impressed with Irizarry’s demeanor, family history, work ethic and education, O’Neal said he selected him as a page, permitted under House rules, and said he cleared it with House Speaker Murrell Smith, R-Sumter.

“I assured him (Smith) I was giving my highest recommendation. I don’t give that to everybody,” O’Neal said. “He’s a good kid. What happened is in the past. He’s not going to do anything like that again. He just got caught up in the moment, and I have 100% confidence he won’t be involved in anything like that again.”

Irizarry submitted an application for House page Dec. 5, 2022, a few days before The Citadel announced he was suspended, according to the House Clerk’s Office. His application stated he had been convicted of a crime, and a further investigation showed he had pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, the clerk’s office said.

“Rep. O’Neal has the right to appoint a page of his own choosing, as does every member of the House,” Smith told The State in a statement. “The Speaker of the House does not play more than a ministerial role in the process.”

House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, D-Richland, said he ”would love to meet (Irizarry) and sit down and talk to him. He has an open invitation to the Democratic Caucus. America is a story about redemptions, and it sounds like he has put his life on the right track — and as long as he has, we should encourage it as much as we can.”

Another Richland Democrat, state Rep. Seth Rose, said he had no objections to Irizarry’s working in the House.

“I wish the young man well,” he said.

Before Jan. 6, 2021, O’Neal said Irizarry was set on joining the U.S. Air Force as a fighter pilot — a goal, O’Neal said, that would be no longer attainable unless Irizarry ever gets a full pardon.

O’Neal defended Irizarry’s work as a page, saying it’s a position that will hopefully benefit the young man in the future.

“If not here, where, at Burger King? Does he get redemption at Burger King?” O’Neal asked. “The kid learned his lesson. Now we’re going to show him the right way to do things in the legislative body instead of the wrong way to do things. He got his punishment, he’s learned his lesson, and he’s continuing to learn here about how to do the right thing.”

Irizarry, who deferred most comment to his attorney, said in a written statement to The State, “I felt that working in the state Legislature would help set me back on track towards being a part of our Democratic process and serving others and our country.”

‘The worst mistake of my life’

Irizarry’s arrest came as a shock to his teachers, friends and to others who’ve known him since high school, more than a dozenpeople wrote in letter testimonials to the court.

He helped younger students, made good grades and spent hundreds of hours doing community service, they said.

In one example, DuBose Kapeluck, chair of The Citadel’s political science department, called Irizarry a top political science student and leader with exemplary character.

“I would not want this one decision to overshadow what he has achieved thus far and what he will achieve in the future,” Kapeluck wrote to the judge.

Irizarry didn’t want to go to Washington on Jan. 6 but was convinced by his best friend, Bishai, to go with a church group from South Carolina, according to Irizarry and statements by his lawyer, family and friends published in the court record.

Two months after he turned 19, Irizarry and his friends traveled to watch Trump speak, then the group went to the Capitol.

Once there, another member in the group — Sherrill — got separated, and Irizarry, trying to find him, entered the Capitol through a window. Once in the building, Irizarry did not shout or damage any property, his lawyer Eugene Ohm said.

Also from South Carolina, Bishai pleaded guilty and was also sentenced to 14 days in jail. Sherrill, from North Carolina, pleaded guilty to assaulting or resisting a law enforcement officer. He has not yet been sentenced.

Prosecutors took a less charitable view of Irizarry’s actions and originally sought a 45-day sentence.

Irizarry, they wrote in a sentencing memo, “directed and encouraged rioters toward the Capitol building,” armed himself with a metal pole and observed rioters violently attack officers on the west front, and saw lines of police trying to block the crowd from progressing.

He also made his way into several areas of the building, “including up an elevator to private rooms and inside of an office, despite smoke-filled halls, sirens blaring, and utter chaos,” prosecutors also wrote. He disobeyed The Citadel’s oath, and, although he was not violent, his conduct “took place in the context of a large and violent riot that relied on numbers to overwhelm police officers,” they said.

Irizarry’s lawyer argued Irizarry was different from others in the Capitol that day because he was not an “election denier” and is dismissive of conspiracy theories.

“He does not think of his conduct as a ‘stupid mistake’ but as a source of great shame and a sign of disloyalty to his country, his family and his name,” Ohm wrote.

Prior to his sentencing in March, Irizarry sought to make clear that the Capitol breach was the worst mistake of his life.

“I regretted Jan. 6th almost the moment I got away from there and began to process what happened,” he wrote in a five-page statement to the judge. “As I left the Capitol and headed home, I looked at my phone and saw the terrible scenes of violence against the Metropolitan and Capitol Police. I was horrified. Not because I thought I’d be arrested, which I didn’t, but because of how ashamed I was to be a part of something like that.”

Learning that officers died defending the Capitol sickened him, he wrote, because “in some way, I participated in that.”

He wrote that at the time, he didn’t understand “the beauty of our institutions” and said the fact he bore some responsibility in the Jan. 6 riot “is terrible to me.”

“Despite me standing here today, I’m glad that whatever the plan was on Jan. 6 failed,” Irizarry told the judge in the statement. “The people that I saw on the news were people that I do not want to associate with. I made a mistake on Jan. 6 — the worst mistake of my life — and I stood on the wrong side. I chose to allow myself to become a pawn in a struggle to redefine our liberal democracy for the worst.”

Ohm told The State Thursday that Chutkan — known as a no-nonsense judge — offered at Irizarry’s March 15 sentencing hearing to write him a letter of recommendation should he decide to reapply to The Citadel.