Thread by @alanfeuer

Starting Thread #3 on the Capitol insurrection arrests & cases. The other two are embedded below.

https://twitter.com/alanfeuer/status/1351606793089249281

Overnight, prosecutors in Tennessee released a detention letter in the case of Eric Munchel, aka Zip Tie guy.
Munchel went to the Capitol armed w/only a Taser but this is the arsenal agents later found inside his house: assault rifles, a sniper rifle, shotguns & pistols.

Munchel seems to have found the zip ties inside in the Capitol itself, lying on a table in a hallway.
According to a video obtained by the FBI, he picked them up.
"Zipties," he says. "I need to get me some of them motherfuckers."

At one point, the video shows Munchel, who broke into the Capitol w/his mom, encountering a group of Oath Keepers inside the building.
One of the Oath Keepers tells him, “There’s 65 more of us coming.”
Munchel gives him a fist bump.

When Chris Kelly of New York got a FB message from a friend concerned that he was going to the march on the Capitol where "Antifa will be out on force," he said don't worry.
"I'll be with ex NYPD and some Proud Boys," he wrote.

The FBI says that Kelly, pictured below, may have been referring to his brother who is a former NYC police officer.

After getting a Twitter tip, scouring Facebook and tracking down an online video, prosecutors were able to charge Michael Foy w/assault, accusing him of beating a group of police officers at the Capitol with a hockey stick.

Before charging Melody Steele-Smith, prosecutors looked at her FB page and found a post in which she claimed the news was lying about the Capitol riot.
"How could I be there all day and miss all this violence & destruction..." she wrote. "I think photos for the news were staged."

The FBI says that high school & college classmates help identify Capitol riot suspect, Patrick Stedman, 32, of New Jersey.
Stedman posted videos of the riot on his Twitter feed in which he describes himself as a "Dating + Relationship Strategist."

A friend called the FBI to report that Florida man, Felipe Marquez, had been posting Snapchat videos of his incursion on Capitol.
Agents were able to determine that Marquez had made his way to Sen. Jeff Merkley's private "hideaway" office.
cc @MikeZamore

A witness on Twitter helped federal agents identify the man seen (below left) inside the Capitol wearing an "American Supremacist" sweatshirt as Dennis Sidorski, of Virginia, a service tech at a DC area auto auction.

The FBI had 2 main pieces of evidence against Florida man Brad Weeks:
1. A video in which he said, "We’ve gotten through & we are going to take back the Capitol! We’re taking back our country! This is our 1776!"
2. A "local man" news article implicating himself in the attack.

Prosecutors have unsealed charges against Hector Vargas of NJ in connection w/the Capitol riot. Vargas describes himself in his Facebook profile as a US Marine Corp vet and "I'm broke."

After one of Nolan Cooke's relatives dropped him & him girlfriend off at the Capitol, they stormed the building, the FBI says.
Cooke posted an Instagram pic of the two of them outside.
"I wouldn't want anyone other than you with me to take on the revolution," he wrote."

Dominick Madden, 43, called in sick to his job at the NYC Dept. of Sanitation on Jan. 6, the FBI says. But agents tracked him to the Capitol riot wearing a Qanon sweatshirt through his social posts & license plate reader data showing him making the trip.

Not long after a DC airport cop watched John Lolos get tossed from a Delta flight for persistently shouting "Trump 2020!" he happened to see a video of Lolos on Instagram leaving the Capitol on riot day.
The cop turned Lolos in. Now he faces federal charges.

The government is seeking to detain Oath Keeper member Donovan Crowl in connection w/the Capitol riot.
"He's been preparing for literal war," a prosecutor in VA says, "b/c that's what his organization told him to do."

"The plan was never for peaceful protest," prosecutor says. "The Oath Keepers arrived in DC prepared for violence."
He adds that the Oath Keeper are planning for "further insurrection."

New detail in Oath Keeper-Capitol riot case:
A federal prosecutor in VA says that when agents searched the home of Oath Keeper member Jessica Watkins, charged w/2 others, Donovan Crowl & Thomas Caldwell, they found explosives.

NEW: Federal judge detains Oath Keeper member Donovan Crowl pending trial in connection w/the Capitol insurrection.

Federal prosecutors in Denver are also seeking to detain Robert Gieswein, an alleged member of the 3 Percenters militia accused of storming the Capitol.

https://twitter.com/alanfeuer/status/1350988097845141505

Prosecutors are saying that Gieswein sprayed bear spray at Capitol cops on the day of the riot, shoved a bike rack into them and brandished a baseball bat before climbing through a broken window of the building.
Gieswein, they say, sprayed chemical irritant at cops inside too.

Before turning himself in to police in Colorado, prosecutors say, Gieswein deleted his social media accounts, destroyed the tactical gear he wore at the Capitol and apparently "lost" his cellphone.

Arguing for Gieswein's release on bail, his lawyer, Matthew Belcher, says of the Capitol attack, "This was an isolated incident at a unique time in our history."

Judge Scott Varholak, not buying the "isolated incident" argument, asks Gieswein's lawyer how a man that once wanted to be a police officer wound up in a mob attacking police officers.

NEW: Federal judge in Denver detains Robert Gieswein, an alleged member of the 3 Percenters militia, in connection w/his role in the Capitol insurrection, saying he came "prepared for battle."
Another militiaman, Oath Keeper Donovan Crowl, was detained earlier this afternoon.

When FBI asked Robert Lyons about the coatrack his pal, Dustin Thompson, stole from Capitol, he said he didn't know. Then agents found a text from Lyons saying, "We need to get the fuck out w/this trophy."
Lyons said he wasn't in the bldg but feds say they found security footage.

Federal prosecutors in Nashville are in court now asking a judge to detain Eric Munchel, the so-called ZipTie Guy, pending trial.

An FBI agent is describing how he found 15 or so firearms at Munchel's home during a 6 am search on 1/10. (The govt released this pic of them earlier this week.)
The agent says he also found a duffel bag w/20-30 assault rifle-style magazines.

Someone is interrupting Munchel's hearing now hollering, HELLO!! HELLLLLLLO!! HELLLLLLLO....!
Muted.

He's back.

As we await a bail decision in the Zip Tie Guy case, feds release charges against an FAA employee, Kevin Strong of Calif.
Strong, a Qanon follower, told the FBI he went to DC to hear Trump speak. He claims he has Q clearance & that a “new one-party system” was coming.

Prosecutors have also unsealed new charges against Scott Fairlamb, of Butler, NJ, for assaulting a cop on the West Front of the Capitol on Jan. 6. At some point, the FBI says, Fairlamb was armed w/a collapsible baton.

Andrew Ericson, of Muskogee Okla., was charged with a federal crime after documenting himself on a Snapchat livestream breaking into Nancy Pelosi's office and taking a beer from the fridge.

Shortly after breaking into the Capitol, Melissa Suarez, a probationary corrections officer from NJ, sent a text to someone confirming she was in.
It wound up in her criminal complaint.
"Sooo we've stormed Capitol Hill lol," it said.

The FBI says that Stephanie Hazelton, of Medford, NJ, was caught in a journo's video inside a tunnel of the Capitol urging on a mob against the police
Carrying her pink iPhone & in camouflage leggings, she called out, "We need more men, keep going, keep pushing, men!"

On the day he stormed the Capitol, the FBI says, Garret Miller, of Dallas County, Tex., posted a message on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Twitter feed.
"Assassinate AOC," Miller wrote.

Miller had been discussing his trip to DC on his own social media for days, FBI says.
On Jan. 2, he posted on FB: “I am about to drive across the country for this trump shit. On Monday...Some crazy shit going to happen this week. Dollar might collapse....civil war could start..."

Miller also rebutted, more or less in real time, the narrative that Trump supporters were not behind the Capitol riot.
Someone wrote on FB: "The people storming The Capitol are not Patriots."
Miller's response?
"Nah we stormed it."