Sanford’s arrest is not related to the death of a Capitol police officer, Brian Sicknick, who was hit in the head by a firefighter, according to two law enforcement officials.
Later that day, charges were dropped against a man accused of hitting a police officer on the Capitol grounds with a flagpole waving the American flag. According to a criminal complaint, the man, Peter Stager, claims that he thought the victim of the assault was a member of Antifa, the loose collective of left-wing activists who often protested with right-wingers, although the words “Metropolitan Police” were clear. written on the officer’s uniform.
“Everyone in there is a treacherous traitor,” he said. Stager said, in an apparent reference to the Capitol, according to a video obtained by the FBI. “Death is the only solution to what’s in that building.”
While pursuing new clues and suspects, federal investigators have also tried to verify an assault charge raised by several lawmakers: that some members of Congress helped coordinate the attack.
Representative Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat in New Jersey and a former Navy pilot, on Wednesday called for an investigation, with more than thirty of her colleagues, into what they described as ‘suspicious’ visits from outside groups. to the Capitol a day before the riot at a time when most tours were restricted due to the coronavirus pandemic. On Thursday, another lawmaker, Pennsylvania Democrat Mary Gay Scanlon, said she had personally seen a tour of the building before the Jan. 6 attack by people who were “Trump supporters.”
A law enforcement official said investigators had yet to discover any evidence that members of Congress were involved in planning the attack.
The spate of arrests and investigations added to an air of nervous activity in a city that was already under siege. The area around the National Mall on Thursday was crammed with military vehicles and was cut off from its vicinity by the imposition of metal fences, which the secret service agent responsible for inaugurating security called a safe and secure bubble. .