A New Hampshire man who told a local news agency he “drank” wine he found during the January attack on Capitol Hill by a pro-Trump crowd was arrested on Monday, the FBI said.
Keene’s Jason Daniel Riddle is charged with three federal crimes, including theft of government property, according to a criminal complaint dated Friday.
It was no secret that Riddle entered the United States Capitol after the crowd invaded him on January 6, the day that Congress was supposed to count the electoral votes that confirmed Joe Biden’s election as president – he said this in an interview with NBC Boston, which was quoted by the FBI in court documents.
In that interview, a few days after the riot, Riddle, 32, said he went to the protest in Washington, DC, but not to break anything and “was in shock” after a group invaded the Capitol.
But he said he followed the crowd inside. “I needed to see,” he said, adding that he found a bottle of wine in an office, poured himself a glass, “took a sip and left.”
A criminal complaint accuses Riddle of intentionally entering or staying in any restricted building or land without legal authority; theft of government property; and violent entry and disorderly conduct on the Capitol grounds.
There was no lawyer listed for Riddle in the federal court’s online records Monday night.
Riddle reportedly admitted to the FBI in an interview on January 22 that he entered the building after a “big guy” with a cane broke a window and opened the door. Riddle said he entered after the initial race, according to an FBI statement on the facts filed in the case.
He told the FBI that he found the wine in an office – later determined to be the Senate Parliamentarian’s Office – and poured himself a glass, and that he also took a book, “Senate Procedure”, which he sold to someone outside for $ 40, according to the FBI document.
People across the country were arrested in connection with the attack on the Capitol, which resulted in the deaths of five people, including a Capitol police officer.
The House of Representatives on January 13 impeachment of President Donald Trump for the second time without precedent; the impeachment article accuses him of “inciting insurrection”. The Senate trial is scheduled to begin Tuesday.
Riddle, in an interview with NBC Boston, said that although he is a supporter of Trump, he denounced “those psychopaths out there, breaking things, hurting people” and said that they can “rot in hell”.
Keene is a city of about 23,000 people in southwestern New Hampshire.
