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20,608 views Jul 24, 2023
A former politically-appointed official from the Trump administration - who also happened to serve as part of his 2016 campaign staff - has officially been convicted on multiple counts for his involvement in the Capitol Riot. Among the charges are assault charges stemming from violent clashes with police officers during the riot. Farron Cousins explains the charges against the former official, and why people like this are likely to make up the next Trump administration if he gets back into office.
*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos. A former Trump official who also happened to be a low level staffer on Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign has officially been convicted for the role that he played in the 2021 January 6th capitol riot. The man is named Federico Klein, also known as Frederick Klein. And according to reports, Mr. Klein was one of the so-called first wave of Trump supporters of rioters that entered the Capitol building. Now, Mr. Klein was, uh, convicted along with several other individuals, one of which, uh, was Steven Capuccio. Uh, and they were convicted of assault charges and other felony offenses stemming from the riot at the US Capitol. Uh, Klein and Capuccio were among nine co-defendants charged with crimes related to one of the most violent and pivotal episodes of January six siege, brutal waves of hand-to-hand combat between rioters and police officers in a tunnel leading to a capitol entrance on the lower West Terrace. McFadden, convicted McFadden's, a judge convicted client of 12 CL counts, including six, charging him with assaulting, resisting, or impeding police officers. Client is scheduled to be sentenced on November 3rd, and he is on house arrest. Until that time, uh, Mr. Capuccio, who uh, as I mentioned, was also charged with him, convicted with him. He was actually sentenced straight to jail as he awaits his sentencing, which is coming up in October. So I don't know why if you say these guys are bad enough to basically be charged together, they did kind of the same things. You let one guy, the Trump official, not be in prison, but the other guy immediately went straight to jail, handcuffed in the courtroom, hauled off. He's going away for quite some time now. Um, so that's a little weird that the former Trump official, of course, gets a little bit special treatment there. He just has to suffer house arrest for a few months before he heads off to prison. But being stuck in your house for a few months seems a lot better than spending even more time in jail. I've never had to really do either of those, so couldn't tell you, but have to imagine. Home is better than jail. Let me read this, this from the, uh, ABC News. Klein, a US Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq, had a top secret security clearance and had been working since 26, uh, 17 in the state department's office of Brazilian and Southern Cone Affairs. He resigned from that position on January 19th, 2021, a day before President Joe Biden's inauguration Klein wearing a red Make America great again. Hat was in the first wave of rioters to enter the tunnel. According to prosecutors, they said Klein pushed hard against officers, telling them you can't stop this. And repeatedly drove his shoulder into an officer who tried to push him back with his baton. Client also wedged a stolen police riot shield between two doors, preventing Officers from closing them. Prosecutors said, video captured Klein exhorting, other rioters to attack police repeatedly, repeatedly yelling, we need fresh people. So this guy had a security clearance. He was a Trump administration official. He worked on Trump's 2016 campaign, and now he's also a convicted Capitol Rioter. And after the Capitol riot, January 6th, he still served in his position where he had a security clearance for 13 more days before he just decided to resign. He could have stayed and had access to top secret information here in the United States. Maybe we ought to do a little bit better job of screening people before we give them these security clearances. We've had numerous instances this year alone that show that maybe we're not doing such a good job with that, right? Let's make sure that we're not giving top secret security clearance to cultists to people who are prone to violent outbursts.
