On June 3, two additional men from Florida became a couple of the latest Trump supporters to be arrested by federal authorities for participating in last year’s Trump-incited attack on the Capitol. The newly captured rioters include 59-year-old Brian Boele and 48-year-old James Brett IV. Their alleged offenses include a felony count of civil disorder, among other federal criminal charges. (Boele and Brett are both facing the civil disorder charge.)
“Boele and Brett joined a group in illegally entering the Capitol grounds and making their way to the Lower West Terrace, where law enforcement officers were attempting to secure the building from a crowd of rioters,” the Justice Department says. The two were charged in a superseding indictment in a case that previously involved three other men from Florida who participated in the riot. A Twitter account called Sedition Track appears to identify both Boele and Brett as associated with the far-right group known as the Proud Boys, prominent members of which were just in recent days indicted for seditious conspiracy in connection to the riot. Fellow Florida resident Alan Fischer III, who’s one of those already charged in the case to which Boele and Brett were added, has been tied to the Proud Boys in court papers.
As for the five total individuals now charged alongside one another in this case, “It is not clear what if any connection the five men have with each other,” according to the Tampa Bay Times. On Twitter, Sedition Track claims Boele to be Fischer’s step-father. There have been significantly more arrests of Capitol riot participants from Florida than any other individual state. Overall, more than 800 people have been arrested so far from across the country in connection to the riot, and over 250 of these individuals have been specifically alleged to have assaulted or impeded police in some form. Meanwhile, the House committee investigating the Capitol riot is readying for the first installment this Thursday of a new round of public hearings. Witnesses at the Thursday hearing will include documentary filmmaker Nick Quested and U.S. Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards, who the committee says was the first officer rioters injured at the Capitol. Quested, meanwhile, was apparently around the Capitol as the riot unfolded.
The select committee makes it official. Their two witnesses Thursday will be USCP Officer Caroline Edwards and filmmaker Nick Quested. pic.twitter.com/kiiwG1fEQz
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) June 7, 2022
The riot committee recently stated the hearing this Thursday is meant to “provide the American people with a summary of our findings about the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.” Per The Guardian, panel leaders Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) will “make a series of opening arguments before outlining a general roadmap” for upcoming hearings. Quested “is likely to deliver his own opening remarks and testify about how the Proud Boys planned their January 6 operation in detail in the weeks before the Capitol attack, narrating and analysing the footage that he recorded,” The Guardian says. Questioning of witnesses will be led by Tim Heaphy, who serves as chief investigative counsel for the House riot committee. Eventually, at future hearings, the panel may publicly present video footage of past testimony from Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.
