A member of the Trump administration was arrested on Thursday in connection with the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
The FBI apprehended Frederico Klein, who worked as a “tech analyst” on Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign before being appointed to the State Department in January 2017. According to court documents obtained by The New York Times, Klein had a top-secret security clearance and was still employed at the State Department when he allegedly participated in the violent riot that left five dead and dozens injured.
The FBI says in court documents that Klein can be seen resisting officers, attempting to take items from them, and assaulting them with a riot shield. The documents allege he “violently shoved the shield into an officer’s body in an attempt to breach the police line.“
The FBI says that videos they obtained show Klein “calling back to the crowd behind him, ‘We need fresh people, we need fresh people’ multiple times.”
The New York Times provides additional details of Klein’s arrest:
The F.B.I. said in a court document that it received a tip about Mr. Klein in January, on the day after it included his image in a poster seeking information about several people seen in the crowd that had stormed the Capitol. A tipster provided investigators with Mr. Klein’s Facebook account, and a different witness later contacted them to say that he knew the man in the poster as “Freddie Klein,” according to the document.
Court documents reveal that Klein faces six counts, including violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, obstruction of Congress, and assaulting and impeding police.
Klein’s appears to be the first member of the Trump administration arrested for participating in the January 6th attack. Politico explains:
The alleged presence of a Trump political appointee at the riot may tie those events more closely to the president, although there is already ample evidence that many of those charged were inspired by Trump’s false claims about widespread election fraud and by his call for supporters to descend on Washington on Jan. 6 for events that he promised would be “wild.”
Klein was apprehended in Virginia. Politico was able to contact his mother, who said her son served in Iraq as a Marine. She confirmed that her son attended the “Stop the Steal” rally, but she was under the impression he did not participate in the storming of the Capitol. She emphasized that her son was not a high-ranking official.
More than 300 people have been arrested for participating in the deadly demonstration that sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
