The FBI arrested a former Trump politician on Thursday, charging the former State Department aide with multiple counts of participating in the Jan.6 insurgency on Capitol Hill. Federico Klein, 42, was still a U.S. government employee and part of the Trump administration when he joined the mob attacking the Capitol where, the FBI alleges, he “spoke physically and verbally with the officers who were holding the line, ”Attacking officers with their own riot shield that had been taken from the police and using it to prop up a door on the Capitol.
While virtually all participants on January 6e are Trump supporters in a way, Klein is the most direct connection to the former president to date – he was a member of the Trump administration. Klein was also a Trump campaign employee during the 2016 race and, according to the FBI, joined the State Department days after Trump took office in January 2017. Klein said on his LinkedIn page that ‘he had a top-secret security clearance prior to joining Trump. administration but which was renewed as recently as 2019. In fact, even after storm the Capitol, an attack on the government itself, Klein continued work at the State Department for nearly two weeks, resigning on the eve of Biden’s inauguration.
Klein’s mother told Politico her son served in the Marines in Iraq and worked in Republican political circles before joining the Trump campaign as a “technology analyst” and later the administration as a person. named “Schedule C” policy earning $ 66,510 annually, according to financial disclosure forms. “Klein worked for a while in the State Department’s Office of Brazil and Southern Cone Affairs before being transferred to the office that deals with Freedom of Information Act requests,” said a former colleague at Politico.
The FBI says Klein was taken into custody Thursday in Virginia. “Fred’s politics are on fire,” Klein’s mother told Politico, “but I’ve never seen him break the law.
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