Federico Klein was an outspoken religious conservative with a “perfectly suburban” background before the F.B.I. arrested him for assaulting Capitol Police.
Soon after President Donald J. Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, the White House told State Department officials that they needed to find a job for a political appointee. Federico G. Klein had been a low-level aide on Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and a stalwart supporter of the president, outspoken on his religious and conservative views. When a senior State Department official tried to object, believing Mr. Klein to be out of his depth in the world of diplomacy, he was overruled, according to a former department official. Mr. Klein was stashed in obscure positions with little influence. Four years later, Mr. Klein,42, finally made his mark in Washington — as a leader of the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan.6, according to a court document filed by the F.B.I., which arrested Mr. Klein on Thursday. He is the first known participant in the Capitol breach to have worked for Mr. Trump’s campaign or held a political appointment in his administration. Interviews with several people who know or worked with Mr. Klein suggest a man with increasingly fiery social and political views, but a forgettable professional record in government and the military. He had offered few public hints that he would be capable of violent political action. Mr. Klein is visible in video footage from the Capitol wearing a collared shirt and a crew neck sweater under a drab green coat, with a red “Make America Great Again” hat. According to the F.B.I. complaint, he used a stolen Capitol Police riot shield to assault officers and wedge open a door they were trying to shut against the pressing crowd. “We need fresh people, need fresh people,” Mr. Klein called back to his compatriots from the front of the line charging the police defenses, according to the F.B.I. complaint. He was arrested after the F.B.I. received a tip from two people who recognized his square-jawed, sandy-haired image from a poster seeking information about Capitol rioters captured on camera. On paper, he hardly seemed a revolutionary. Mr. Klein, who goes by Freddie, grew up in an affluent suburb of Washington, D.C., attended George Mason University, joined the Marine Corps as a reservist and volunteered for mainstream Republicans, including Mitt Romney in his 2012 presidential campaign, before signing on with Mr. Trump. He left little mark in the workplace. Several State Department officials and Trump political hands said that they had no memory of Mr.
