Men jailed in attack on riot officer

WASHINGTON — Federal authorities have arrested and charged two men with assaulting U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick with bear spray during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot but have not determined whether the exposure caused his death.

Julian Elie Khater, 32, of Pennsylvania and George Pierre Tanios, 39, of Morgantown, W.Va., were arrested Sunday — Tanios at home and Khater as he stepped off a plane in Newark, N.J., police said.

“Give me that bear s***,” Khater said to Tanios on video recorded at 2:14 p.m. at the Lower West Terrace of the Capitol, where Sicknick and other officers were standing guard behind metal bicycle racks, arrest papers say.

About nine minutes later, after Khater said he had been hit with bear spray, he

is seen on video discharging a canister into the face of Sicknick and two other officers, the arrest papers allege.

Khater and Tanios are charged with nine counts, including assaulting three officers with a deadly weapon — Sicknick, another Capitol Police officer identified as C. Edwards and a District of Columbia police officer identified as B. Chapman. They are also charged with civil disorder and obstruction of a congressional proceeding. The charges are punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

The men each made brief court appearances from jail via videoconference Monday and will remain locked up pending hearings. Tanios will appear in court again Thursday to determine whether he will remain detained while awaiting trial. A lawyer for Khater indicated that his client intended to plead innocent.

The arrests are the closest federal prosecutors have come to identifying and charging anyone associated with the deaths that happened during and after the riot. Five people died; the others were civilians, including a woman who was shot by a police officer inside the Capitol.

But many rioters are facing charges of injuring police officers, who were attacked with bats, sprayed with irritants, punched and kicked, and rammed with metal gates meant to keep the insurrectionists from the Capitol.

Two other officers who tried to stop the siege died by suicide, according to the local police. At least 138 officers were injured.

The Justice Department has said in court filings that the riot investigation is most likely “one of the largest in American history,” with more than 900 search warrants executed in nearly every state.

The FBI has collected 15,000 hours of police body-camera footage, data from 1,600 electronic devices, more than 210,000 tips from the public and about 80,000 reports related to suspects and witnesses.

Prosecutors filed charges against Khater and Tanios after tipsters contacted the FBI identifying them from wanted images released by the bureau from surveillance video and officer-worn body camera footage, the complaint said. It said the men grew up together in New Jersey, and that Khater had worked in State College, Pa., and Tanios owns a business in Morgantown.

The business is Sandwich U in the city that’s home to West Virginia University. On social media, Tanios has referred to himself as the “Sandwich Nazi” and has tangled with customers and former employees in online comments. In 2019 on Instagram, he promoted a onestar Google review that said, “If donald trump was a restaurant manager, this is who he would be.”

Tanios’ sister, Maria Butros, said when reached by phone Monday that her brother “was arrested for something he didn’t do. He didn’t do it. He would never do that.”

Khater family members could not be reached.

VIDEO EVIDENCE

Questions remain about whether anyone will be held criminally responsible in the death of Sicknick, 42, a 13-year veteran of the Capitol Police and a New Jersey Air National Guard veteran who served in Saudi Arabia and Kyrgyzstan.

Autopsy results were still pending Monday, according to a spokeswoman for the deputy mayor of public safety in D.C. Without a cause of death, his case has not been established as a homicide, although charging papers allege that evidence of an assault on Sicknick is clear on video.

Investigators initially believed that Sicknick was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher, according to two people familiar with the case, but determined that he did not die of blunt-force trauma. As they’ve collected more evidence, the theory of the case has evolved and investigators now believe Sicknick may have ingested a chemical substance that may have contributed to his death, officials have said.

An FBI agent alleged in charging papers that publicly available video showed that after Khater asked for the bear spray, Tanios replied, “Hold on, hold on, not yet, not yet … it’s still early.” The agent said the exchange showed that the two were “working in concert and had a plan to use the toxic spray against law enforcement.”

The agent asserted that the men “appeared to time the deployment of chemical substances to coincide with other rioters’ efforts to forcibly remove the bike rack barriers that were preventing the rioters from moving closer to the Capitol building,” using their hands, ropes and straps.

All three officers were temporarily blinded and incapacitated for more than 20 minutes, and Edwards suffered scarring beneath her eyes for several weeks, charging papers said.

Sicknick died at a hospital about 9:30 p.m. Jan. 7, a day after 139 police officers were assaulted by the angry mob of then-President Donald Trump supporters wielding sledgehammers, baseball bats, hockey sticks, crutches and flagpoles. At least 800 people entered the Capitol after a smaller number forced entry, police have testified, seeking to block Congress from confirming the presidential election results.

Sicknick, who grew up in South River, N.J., in February became the third officer to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda, where fellow officers, lawmakers and President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden came to pay their respects.

Referring to Sicknick, a House-passed article of impeachment charged Trump with inciting insurrection, alleging that members of a crowd he addressed “injured and killed law enforcement personnel.”

Then-acting U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said in a statement shortly afterward that Sicknick died of “the injuries he suffered defending the U.S. Capitol,” echoing a statement by the police.

The police said Sicknick “was injured while physically engaging with protesters” and collapsed after returning to his office following the riot.

After more than two months, no autopsy or toxicology report has been made public.

The case remains a top priority for investigators — including the FBI, Capitol Police and D.C. police, which handles all deaths in the District — with Rosen saying authorities would “spare no resources in investigating and holding accountable those responsible.”

‘HEINOUS CRIMES’

In a statement Monday, Capitol Police Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman called the attack on the Capitol and its officers “an attack on our democracy.”

“Those who perpetrated these heinous crimes must be held accountable, and — let me be clear — these unlawful actions are not and will not be tolerated by this department,” Pittman said.

The day after Sicknick died, his family issued a statement noting “many details regarding Wednesday’s events and the direct causes of Brian’s injuries remain unknown and our family asks the public and the press to respect our wishes in not making Brian’s passing a political issue.”

The family added: “Brian is a hero and that is what we would like people to remember.”

Sicknick’s family has not spoken publicly, and their spokeswoman said in February that they decided against conducting interviews.

Though Sicknick supported Trump, those who encountered him said his political views did not align neatly with any political party. Messages he sent to his congressman, Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., were “polite and measured,” according to the lawmaker’s spokesman. He opposed impeachment and favored gun control. He was concerned about animal cruelty and the national debt.

Information for this article was contributed by Spencer S. Hsu, Peter Hermann and Julie Tate of The Washington Post; by Michael Balsamo, Alanna Durkin Richer, Colleen Long and Cuneyt Dil of The Associated Press; and by Katie Benner and Adam Goldman of The New York Times.