A former State Department aide has been arrested by the FBI on charges connected to the Jan. 6 breach of Capitol, marking the first known political appointee of ex-President Donald Trump to face prosecution related to the attempt to stop the certification of the Electoral College's votes for President Joe Biden.
The man, Federico Klein, 42, worked on Trump's 2016 campaign before he was hired at the State Department, reports Politico. Samantha Shero, a spokesperson for the FBI's Washington Field Office, said he was arrested and taken into custody in Virginia. The charges against Klein were not made immediately available.
Klein, as of last summer, was designated as a "Schedule C" political appointee and was listed in a federal directory as a special assistant in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs.
He also worked for a period in the State Department's Office of Brazilian and Southern Cone Affairs before he was transferred to the office handling Freedom of Information Act requests, said a former colleague speaking on the condition of anonymity.
According to Federal Election Commission records, Klein, who was known as "Freddie," worked as a tech analyst on Trump's 2016 campaign. A financial disclosure form he filed when joining the State Department shows he earned $15,000 in that position and was paid another $5,000 by the campaign in 2017.
The suspect's mother, Cecilia Klein, told Politico Thursday night that she and her son had discussed the attack on the Capitol a few weeks ago and he confirmed that he had been in Washington, but as far as she knows, he was "on the Mall. That's what he told me."
However, she could not recall if he specifically denied entering the Capitol itself, adding that she and her son rarely discuss politics or Trump because they have widely different political viewpoints.
Klein did not respond to Politico's requests for comment.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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