Federal Drug Agent Identified And Charged For Trump’s Insurrection

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RA then-agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has now been criminally charged by federal authorities for participating in the January riot at the Capitol. That individual, California resident Mark Ibrahim, apparently did not enter the Capitol building, but he did pass police lines that had been set up to help protect the premises. At the time, Ibrahim was carrying a pistol that he had been assigned as part of his DEA work — undercutting, yet again, repeated attempts by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) to dispute describing what happened at the Capitol as an “armed insurrection.”

Now, Ibrahim has been hit with federal criminal charges, including felony counts of “entering a restricted area with a weapon, possession of a firearm on Capitol grounds and lying to investigators,” as summarized by POLITICO. As for the charge of lying to investigators — which might be an entirely new one in Capitol riot cases — Ibrahim is accused of falsely representing his conduct at the Capitol to the inspector general’s office overseeing the Department of Justice. He claimed that he did not display his DEA badge and weapon at the Capitol — but photos have emerged “in which he appeared to be deliberately showing his badge as well as the gun holstered on his hip,” POLITICO explains.

Ibrahim has previously claimed to have been fired from the DEA. Notably, Ibrahim made this revelation of his apparent firing during an appearance on Fox News, which yet again casts the network’s conduct into question. Ibrahim appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight, which host Tucker Carlson has repeatedly used to broadcast ignorant, virulent ideology into American homes. As it turns out, Carlson also used his show for a sympathetic portrait of someone who turned out to be allegedly guilty of federal criminal offenses in connection to the deadly attack by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol.

Darren Richie, an attorney for Ibrahim, complained about Richie’s indictment to POLITICO, insisting that the charges stem “from conjecture, political pressure and a flawed attempt to paint a specific narrative through pictures taken wholly out of context.” Is there any context in which displaying a weapon and federal law enforcement badge while in the crowd at a riot attacking the U.S. Capitol is acceptable? Ibrahim has claimed that he was around the Capitol merely to document what happened, adding that he traveled to D.C. “with a friend who’d been asked by the FBI to document the event,” POLITICO says — but that individual has denied Ibrahim’s claims about what happened. No matter his grandstanding, Ibrahim seems to clearly be a Trump backer — he was carrying a flag modeled after the original U.S. flag while at the Capitol, as though intentionally hearkening back to the American revolution.