Two brothers from upstate New York were arrested Thursday on charges of attacking law enforcement agents at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and of participating in the violent mob that attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Roger A. Voisine, 48, and Reynold R. Voisine, 47, face felony charges including civil disorder and assaulting an officer with a deadly or dangerous weapon.
The Voisine brothers started the day on Jan. 6 by attending former President Donald J. Trump’s rally at the Ellipse, in front of the White House, according to a news release issued Thursday by Matthew M. Graves, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. They appear to have prepared for trouble. As they left the rally and walked to the Capitol, each man put on a paintball mask. Roger Voisine also carried a two-way radio, a GoPro camera mounted on a stick and a tripod inside his jacket.
As the mob attacked officers with the U.S. Capitol Police and forced its way into the building, “both brothers played active roles in the day’s violence,” according to the news release.
Reynold Voisine was seen assaulting officers with a crutch, a stolen police riot shield and a blue pole, the authorities said. When images from the riot circulated online, private citizens analyzed the pictures, trying to identify individuals in the mob. The blue pole earned Reynold Voisine the online nickname #BlueJavelin, according to a statement of facts that prosecutors released.
At around 3:20 p.m., he was among a group of rioters seen violently beating an officer and dragging the officer from the Lower West Terrace Tunnel, site of some of the day’s most violent attacks against law enforcement, an officer with U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement wrote.
Roger Voisine attacked officers with a pipe, a black rod, three shoes and a wooden table leg studded with nails, the authorities said. In photos released by prosecutors, he is seen holding the table leg, with a long and jagged nail protruding. Online, he was nicknamed #TableLegWhacker.
He remained near the mob’s front line, aiming a spotlight into officers’ eyes and documenting the events with his camera, according to the authorities.
In interviews with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Reynold Voisine said that he had deleted photos from his camera to conceal how close he’d gotten to the Capitol, and Roger Voisine said he had intentionally discarded the memory card from his GoPro camera with footage from the Capitol, according to prosecutors.
Mr. Graves’s office did not immediately provide information about the lawyers representing the Voisines.
The investigation into the Voisines began after Jan. 8, 2021, prosecutors said, when an inmate in a jail in Connecticut placed a call to a member of the Voisine family and indicated that the brothers had participated in the riot. The F.B.I. interviewed both brothers, who confirmed in February 2021 that they were present at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Roger Voisine lives in Canton, N.Y., and Reynold Voisine lives in nearby Nicholville, two small towns in St. Lawrence County. They were arrested in Plattsburgh, N.Y., and were scheduled to make their initial appearances in federal court in the Northern District of New York. The case will be prosecuted by Mr. Graves’s office and the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section of the Justice Department.
More than 1,532 people have been charged in the 45 months since Jan. 6 for crimes related to the breach of the Capitol. More than 571 of them have been charged with impeding law enforcement or assaulting officers, a felony.
The post Two Brothers Charged With Assaulting Officers in Jan. 6 Riot appeared first on New York Times.
