In mid-June, a self-described Virginia militiaman drove with a new acquaintance from his home in Alexandria to a former prison in the nearby town of Lorton, about 15 miles away. “Technically,” the papers quote him as saying before the group departed, “you’re engaging in war or conflict. They were instead federal agents who had been spying on him and some of his associates since shortly after the riot at the Capitol six months ago. On Tuesday, federal prosecutors unsealed a complaint against Mr. Duong, charging him not with making bombs but with illegally breaching the Capitol on Jan. 6. In the complaint, they did not accuse Mr. Duong of committing any violence, but rather accused him of repeatedly using violent rhetoric and conducting surveillance at the Capitol in the weeks after the attack by the pro-Trump mob.

Source: New York Times July 06, 2021 20:48 UTC