Former Government Employee Charged With Falsely Accusing Coworkers Of Participating In Jan. 6 Capitol Protest
A former government employee has been charged with submitting false tips to the FBI alleging that some of his intelligence community coworkers participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol protest. Miguel Eugenio Zapata was arrested on Thursday in Virginia on a charge of submitting false statements to law enforcement.
An FBI task force officer’s affidavit reads that Zapata sent at least seven anonymous tips to the FBI’s website where he alleged his coworkers were involved in the Jan. 6 Capitol protest. The tips included “their full names ages parts of their addresses current employers and security clearance levels.”
Investigators interviewed both coworkers mentioned in the first two false tips submitted on Feb. 11, 2021, and confirmed they were working in Virginia during the protest. Prosecutors say Zapata submitted two additional false tips on Feb. 16, 2021, including one that accused a former intelligence community contractor of accessing “classified Agency resources to foment terror and incite violence by sharing this information with other conspiracy theory-based personalities.”
Zapata is accused of sending the home addresses full names and security clearance levels of his former colleagues to the FBI which prompted the FBI and some of the victims’ employers to launch investigations into their alleged conduct based on the faulty information. “None of the seven government employees and contractors were in Washington D.C. on January 6 or attacked the Capitol” prosecutors confirmed in court records.
