A former Trump campaign aide who later became a Trump State Dept. appointee was arrested in connection with the January 6 riot at the Capitol. That appointee, Federico Klein, 42, previously worked for an anti-LGBTQ hate group, the Family Research Council.
On Thursday the FBI arrested Klein “on charges related to the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6,” Politico reports, “marking the first known instance of an appointee of President Donald Trump facing criminal prosecution in connection with the attempt to block Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s victory.”
Politico’s Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney report the “alleged presence of a Trump political appointee at the riot may tie those events more closely to the president, although there is already ample evidence that many of those charged were inspired by Trump’s false claims about widespread election fraud and by his call for supporters to descend on Washington on Jan. 6 for events that he promised would be ‘wild.'”
Klein also served as a Marine in Iraq, his mother told Politico, and he “held a top-secret clearance from 2014 to 2019, issued by the Defense Department, according to his LinkedIn page.”
At the State Dept. Klein worked in the “Office of Brazilian and Southern Cone Affairs before being transferred to the office that handles Freedom of Information Act requests, according to a former colleague who spoke on the condition of anonymity.”
Update:
Politico has updated their report, stating, “A spokesman for the [Family Research Council] said Klein was not an employee, but did unpaid volunteer work for them in 2015.”