Ex-official guilty of riot assault
Man one of nine charged in violent Capitol tunnel conflict
WASHINGTON — A man who worked as a politically appointed State Department official in former President Donald Trump’s administration was convicted Thursday of charges that he attacked police officers during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden heard testimony without a jury before he convicted the former official, Federico Guillermo Klein, and a co-defendant, Steven Cappuccio, of assault charges and other felony offenses stemming from the riot at the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters.
Klein and Cappuccio were among nine co-defendants charged with crimes related to one of the most violent and pivotal episodes of the Jan. 6 siege: brutal waves of hand-tohand combat between rioters and police officers in a tunnel leading to a Capitol entrance on the Lower West Terrace.
Klein and Cappuccio converged on the tunnel as outnumbered police officers struggled for hours to hold back the mob of rioters, prosecutors said in a court filing.
McFadden convicted Klein of 12 counts, including six charging him with assaulting, resisting or impeding police officers. Klein is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 3.
The judge is scheduled to sentence Cappuccio on Oct. 19. McFadden convicted him of assault charges but acquitted him of two counts, including a felony charge that he obstructed the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress for certifying Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. But, McFadden convicted Klein of the same obstruction charge.
The judge said the tunnel was the scene of “shocking violence and hostility” against police.
“No police officer should have had to endure those attacks without provocation,” McFadden said.
McFadden allowed Klein to remain free under house arrest until his sentencing but ordered Cappuccio to be jailed immediately after the verdict. Klein shook Cappuccio’s hand in the courtroom before a deputy marshal handcuffed him.
Klein, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq, had a Top Secret security clearance and had been working since 2017 in the State Department’s office of Brazilian and Southern Cone Affairs. He resigned from that position on Jan. 19, 2021, a day before President Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Klein, wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat, was in the first wave of rioters to enter the tunnel, according to prosecutors. They said Klein pushed hard against officers, telling them, “You can’t stop this!” and repeatedly drove his shoulder into an officer who tried to push him back with his baton.
Klein also wedged a stolen police riot shield between two doors, preventing officers from closing them, prosecutors said.
Cappuccio, also a military veteran, drove from Texas to Washington, D.C. to attend Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6. He was arrested at his home in Universal City, Texas, in August 2021.
TEXAS VETERAN GUILTY
A Collin County, Texas, man was found guilty Wednesday of assaulting a police officer during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach in Washington, D.C.
Matthew DaSilva, a 51-yearold Navy veteran from Lavon, was convicted of two felonies and four misdemeanors.
Prosecutors said DaSilva made his way to the Capitol’s west plaza about 2:30 p.m. that day while holding a flagpole and waving a large blue flag. Less than two hours later, security footage showed him at the back of a crowd of rioters “engaging in a group ‘heaveho’ maneuver in an attempt to dislodge law enforcement from their position” defending an entrance to the building, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
DaSilva is scheduled to be sentenced in October. It was not immediately clear how much time in prison he faces.