The FBI said Thursday it had arrested a former State Department assistant on charges related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, including unlawful entry, violent and disorderly conduct, obstruction of Congress and law enforcement. and assaulting an officer with a dangerous weapon. .
Former mediator Federico G. Klein, who was seen in videos in court documents in videos of the riots that officers resisted and assaulted them with a stolen riot shield, is the first member of the Trump administration to file criminal charges. facing in connection with the storm of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
He worked on Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 and a few days after Mr. Trump’s inauguration began working for the State Department in January 2017, according to a financial disclosure form he submitted as an executive branch employee.
Klein’s arrest was reported earlier by Politico.
The FBI said in a court document that he had a tip about Mr. Little received, the day after it recorded his image in a poster seeking information about several people seen in the crowd storming the Capitol. A tipster provided investigators with Facebook’s Facebook account, and another witness later contacted them to say he knew the man on the poster as ‘Freddie Klein’, according to the document.
Based on this information, the FBI determined that Mr. Klein allegedly attacked Congress on January 6 to kill Mr. To help Trump maintain power illegally, that he was still employed by the state department and has a top-secret security clearance, the bureau said in the document.
Mr. Klein can be seen in videos and other images dressed in a red “Make America Great Again” hat, pants and a dress shirt as he tries to break past a line of Metropolitan police officers in a tunnel near the western race. to the document. “Klein quickly moved to the front left of the crowd and to the door to the Capitol building, where he enters into physical and oral conversation with the officers holding the line,” the FBI said.
He was part of a mob trying to push through the doors, despite warnings from an officer to back him up, the FBI said, using a ‘riot shield apparently removed from an officer’ to close the door. to prevent the doors.
Mr. Klein was seen in other videos and appealed to the crowd behind him: “We need fresh people, we need fresh people,” the FBI said.
The Justice Department’s aggressive and extensive investigation into the Capitol attack has led to criminal charges against more than 300 people, including dozens of extremist right-wingers accused of conspiring to attack Congress for the final certification of Joseph R to stop. Biden Jr. ‘s Electoral College victory.
Many accused said that on the instructions of Mr. Trump acted, falsely claiming he won the November election.
In recent weeks, the investigation has become closer to Mr. Trump came. Last month, investigators began investigating the communications of some right-wing extremists who broke the Capitol to determine whether Roger J. Stone Jr., a former associate of the former president, played any role in their plans to join Congress. to fall. Mr. Stone denied any wrongdoing.