A former State Department aide during the Trump administration was arrested in connection with the pro-Trump rebellion on the United States Capitol, according to an FBI spokesman and documents.
Federico Klein was arrested on Thursday by the FBI in Virginia, but the agency did not discuss the charges or the case, and the court’s documents did not appear to be online.
The Politician first reported the arrest.
Government records show that Klein worked on the Donald Trump campaign in 2016 and was hired at the State Department in January 2017.
Government files show that, at least in 2020, Klein was serving as a political nominee in the State Department as a special assistant to the Western Hemisphere Affairs Bureau.
An FBI spokesman referred other questions to the District of Columbia Public Prosecutor.
A request for comment sent by email from that office was not returned immediately on Thursday night.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Cecilia L. Klein said her 42-year-old son told her after the January 6 attack on Capitol that he was at the Mall, but did not go to Capitol grounds.
“I asked him – he said, ‘I was at the mall.’ I said, ‘Did you go to the Capitol?’ He said ‘no, I didn’t, I was at the mall’, “said Cecilia Klein by phone on Thursday night.
She said her policy is very different from that of her son and that he was not a senior official in the Trump administration.
“We are not talking about a cabinet official or a sub-cabinet,” she said. “My son was a C-bracket,” she said, referring to a government classification.
Justice Department officials said they filed lawsuits against more than 300 people during the Capitol riot, some of which are sealed because the defendants have not yet been arrested. Federal prosecutors allege a wide range of motives and behaviors, from extreme violence to apparent ignorance that what they were doing was illegal.
Some have been accused of assaulting police officers and threatening to assault lawmakers, while others are accused of a minor offense of illegally entering a protected building.
A study by George Washington University this week found that more than half of the accused were not linked to extremist groups or to each other.
Michael Kosnar contributed.