A Donald Trump supporter who opened fire during the 2021 attack on the US Capitol was arrested last month on kidnapping and sexual assault charges. according to Cook County Sheriff’s Office in Illinois.
John Panolos, 40, is from Utah but His sister, who lives in the Chicago area, “near 29th Street and Cicero Avenue in Cicero,” was arrested on Oct. 17, according to the Cook County Sheriff’s Office. A warrant was issued for his arrest in Salt Lake County on Oct. 1 on charges of kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office said.
Panolos was previously identified in a February 2022 NBC News story, which exposed him as the man who fired a weapon at the Capitol on January 6.
Online “sedit hunters” correctly identified Panolos, 40, and gave his name to the FBI in February 2021. Months later, on July 4, 2021, Panolos stabbed a man — Christopher Thomas Sinn — to death in Salt Lake City, but was not charged after claiming self-defense.
According to Salt Lake City police, after he was arrested for the stabbing, Banolos told cops: “I was at the riots in D.C. You can look for me, okay?”
He also told them: “I’m the one in the video holding the gun here.”
Sen’s adoptive mother told NBC News in 2022 that she was “saddened” that the FBI did not act on information about Panolos’ behavior at the Capitol after her son was killed. “We are disappointed with the justice system… He should have been arrested… He would have done this to someone else,” she said.
In viral Video Vice News With footage of the January 6 riot at the Capitol, a man named Panolos was seen carrying a gun strapped to his waistband in the crowd. In additional videos later released, Banolos appears to fire his gun into the air twice.
Although he was identified by citizen investigators months before the stabbing, the FBI did not arrest Banuelos for years. In the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, federal investigators received more than 200,000 tips about individuals who may have attended the protest, leading some tipsters to fear in the years after the riot that their tips had been buried by the sheer volume of calls.
Banolos was eventually arrested in March 2024 and ordered held in pretrial detention after prosecutors described his behavior as “mind-numbingly dangerous.”
After taking office in January, the president pardoned nearly 1,500 individuals charged in the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Panolos correctly predicted in court in May 2024 that Trump would be elected and pardoned the rioters on January 6.
“President Trump will be in office six months from now, so I’m not worried about that,” Panolos said. According to the court record.
Ministry of Justice Move To dismiss the case on January 21, 2025, the day after Trump took office.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote at the time that she could “not identify — and neither party has identified — any flaw in the legal foundations of the government’s case, or the factual basis of the government’s case,” and that “the government’s only stated reason for pursuing dismissal with prejudice is that the President, in addition to pardoning the defendant, ordered the Attorney General to do so.” She wrote that a pardon “cannot whitewash the blood, feces, and horror that the mob left in its wake.”
“In hundreds of cases like this one over the past four years, judges in this region have administered justice without fear or favour. The historical record created by those proceedings, unswayed by political winds, must stand as a testament and a warning.” books.
Prosecutors in that case did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment.