Suspect in Zeldin attack is arrested on federal charge

A man accused of using a sharp weapon Thursday night to confront Rep. Lee Zeldin, the Republican candidate for governor of New York, has been arrested on a federal assault charge, officials said.

The incident took place outside a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall near Rochester, New York, where Zeldin was speaking during the first in a series of campaign stops over the weekend. A man, who was later identified by police as David G. Jakubonis, approached Zeldin with an object that federal officials later described as a key chain with two sharp points.

Jakubonis pulled the candidate down before being dragged away by several people nearby, according to officials and videos of the attack. Zeldin was not injured, a campaign representative said at the time.

Saturday, Jakubonis, 43, of Fairport, New York, appeared in federal court in Rochester before U.S. Magistrate Judge Marian W. Payson of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.

He had earlier been charged with attempted assault in the second degree, according to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, and released without bail. Under state law, judges have been prohibited since 2020 from setting bail on a nonviolent felony charge of attempted assault.

The federal charge — assaulting a member of Congress using a dangerous weapon — carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, according to officials. Jakubonis will be held pending a detention hearing Wednesday, according to Barbara Burns, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York.

After the attack, Republicans quickly cast Jakubonis’ release as a failure of the bail law enacted by Democrats in recent years. Zeldin, who has made public safety a centerpiece of his campaign against Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said Jakubonis should not have been released and argued that the episode illustrated a need to increase policing and tighten New York’s bail laws to make it easier for judges to hold people charged with certain crimes.

In a hastily arranged news conference Saturday afternoon, Zeldin repeated that he did not think Jakubonis should have been set free the day before.

“I am concerned, deeply, that we have laws in this state that would result in that offense not being bail eligible,” he said.

He said he did not believe Jakubonis should have been “immediately released back out on the streets and I predicted publicly that that’s exactly what was going to happen.”

Zeldin did not respond to a request for comment but issued a statement after his rally, calling the justice system “broken” and “procriminal.”

“Cashless bail must be repealed,” he said in the statement, “and judges should have discretion to set cash bail on far more offenses.”

Democrats have accused Zeldin of trying to exploit the attack for political gain.

Jakubonis, a U.S. Army veteran who served in Iraq, said Friday that he did not know who Zeldin was at the time of the attack. In a disjointed interview outside his apartment in suburban Rochester, he said he approached Zeldin, an Army reservist, to try to take his microphone after someone told him that Zeldin was “disrespecting veterans.”

Jakubonis, a graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology, said that he was battling a relapse of alcoholism and was being treated for anxiety. He described his mental state Thursday night as “checked out,” adding that he had fallen “asleep within” himself.

He suggested the pointed object he was holding at the time of the incident — which was shaped like a cat — was intended for self-defense.

“The ears are plastic, but I guess they’re sharp,” he said in the interview Friday afternoon. “Then I was tackled.”

According to federal court records, investigators said Jakubonis told them he had consumed whiskey on the day of the incident.

“When shown a video of the incident, Jakubonis stated, in sum and substance, that what was depicted in the video was disgusting,” the court records said.

Voter registration records indicated that he was not affiliatedwithapoliticalparty,and aLinkedInpagethatappeared to belong to him indicated he had been “actively seeking employment” for years.