Federico Klein, an ex-State Department employee appointed by former President Donald Trump, was convicted of multiple felonies after a long-lasting trial regarding accusations of violence toward the Capitol Police on Jan. 6, 2021.
U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden heard testimony without a jury on Thursday and convicted Klein on 12 counts — six related to assaulting, impeding, or resisting Capitol police officers, the Washington Post reported. Klein is expected to be sentenced on Nov. 3.
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McFadden, who was nominated to the Washington, D.C., court in 2017 by Trump, convicted Klein alongside co-defendant Steven Cappuccio, part of nine co-defendants charged with violent crimes during the Capitol insurrection.
Cappuccio is expected to be sentenced in October and is accused of ripping the mask off police officer Daniel Hodges, who testified against another rioter charged with assaulting him, and the rioter was later sentenced to seven years in prison.
Klein started off as an aide for Trump’s 2016 campaign before working as a special assistant in the Office of Brazilian and Southern Cone Affairs in 2017. He resigned from the role a day before President Joe Biden’s inauguration, according to a ProPublic database.
Klein was arrested by the FBI in March 2021 and was the first Trump appointee to be charged in a Capitol breach case.
An indictment from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said Klein “willfully and knowingly engaged in an act of physical violence within the United States Capitol Grounds and any of the Capitol Buildings.”
Klein was among the first rioters to enter the Capitol tunnel and attempt to breach the door, according to prosecutors.
“Klein placed himself in the thick of the violence aimed at breaking through the center doorway of the Lower West Terrace to gain entrance to the Capitol Building,” a 2021 motion denying Klein’s plea to revoke the order of detention said.
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Klein’s attorneys have sought to separate his case from the other defendants, arguing his alleged offenses are less severe than those who stand trial with him and “engaged in far more threatening and intentional conduct.” McFadden allowed Klein to remain on house arrest until his sentencing.
“Mr. Klein is not alleged to have injured anyone, and the government concedes his ‘assault’ of a law enforcement officer amounts to his having been in possession of a riot shield that also came into contact with a law enforcement officer,” Stanley Woodward, Klein’s lawyer, said in a 2022 court filing.
