Election 2020

Jan 6 Immigrant Rioter, Who Was Anti-Immigrant, Had No Idea What the Capitol Building Was or Its Significance

I’d be willing to bet that most of the rioters who attacked the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, have little or no idea what function the Capitol actually serves. Whipped into a fury by their Messiah, Donald Trump, they charged into the building where lawmakers were preparing to certify Trump’s loss of the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, leaving death and destruction in their wake.

Certainly 47-year-old Duong Dai Luu, a member of the angry mob didn’t know what kind of business was conducted inside the Capitol, and that’s what he told the FBI. That’s according to a newly unsealed complaint filed in a Washington, D.C. federal court, The Daily Beast reports.

And Luu perhaps, regrets his actions. He documented the riot with cell phone videos of ransacked offices, and MAGA hat selfies and told officials that he probably should have known he didn’t belong on the premises.

“Luu was unable to describe the function of the Capitol building, but admitted that he recognized that it wasn’t good to be inside the building as it was the property of the government and that he was not allowed to enter without permission,” wrote one member of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in an affidavit.

Luu doesn’t have an attorney as yet listed in court records. He was arrested Thursday in Houston, Texas. Multiple calls by The Daily Beast to Luu’s phone, which is what led authorities to him, rang through to voicemail.

In the days following the failed insurrection, federal authorities subpoenaed Google, seeking all of the accounts present inside the Capitol on January 6. One of the accounts among them, per the affidavit, was a mobile device associated with a Google account that belonged to Luu. According to location data, the device arrived on Capitol grounds on January 6 at about 2:41 p.m. and was inside the Capitol building between 2:58 and 3:11 p.m., and left the area at 3:27 the affidavit states.

The affidavit also reports that a second JTTF officer interviewed Luu on July 14, 2021, about his activities on January 6. Luu said he attended Trump’s rally that morning, where, as we know, the former president exhorted his supporters to storm the Capitol and “fight like hell” to prevent Joe Biden’s electoral win from being certified. After that, Luu said he walked to the Capitol and “follow[ed] a group of others into the building.”

Luu also handed over a pair of selfies he took on the Capitol grounds, the affidavit noted. Three weeks later he sent the agents two videos he took inside the Capitol.

“One of Luu’s cell phone recordings that he sent to the FBI in August 2021 appears to have been taken while Luu was inside one of the offices within the Capitol—specifically, based on my review of the U.S. Capitol layout, Room S132,” according to the affidavit. “In the video, papers and other debris are strewn about the office space and the floor, while others in the recording appear to be rummaging through the office space.”

According to The Daily Beast, Room s132 is the Senate Parliamentarian’s office, which can be seen in the Capitol floor plan. Luu was captured on CCTV footage entering the building, which corroborates the Google location data, per the affidavit.

And in the footage, he was hard to miss since he was wearing a “distinctive white Northface puffer jacket with black chest and shoulders, red MAGA trucker-style hat with American flag pattern on the mesh rear portion with a black and gray beanie underneath, a black and gray plaid scarf, and a bluish-green or teal colored COVID facemask, which was consistent with the selfie-photographs he provided to the FBI,” the affidavit reports, adding, “The CCTV video that recorded Luu in the Capitol shows that, when he was present, there was broken glass and other debris in the hall within the Capitol.”

Luu, an immigrant, expressed anti-immigrant sentiments on social media.

Luu was once more interviewed by an FBI JTTF at a Houston coffee shop on Dec. 3, where he “again admitted to being inside the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021,” per the affidavit.

He was arrested Thursday morning and faces four misdemeanor counts: knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority; knowingly, and with intent to impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of government business or official functions, engaging in disorderly or disruptive conduct; and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building; parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building.

Luu may not have known what function the Capitol building serves but I’d hazard a guess he has a better idea of what goes on inside and it looks like, with his arrest, he’s about to discover more about how government works.

meet the author

Megan has lived in California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida and she currently lives in Central America. Living in these places has informed her writing on politics, science, and history. She is currently owned by 15 cats and 3 dogs and regularly owns Trump supporters when she has the opportunity. She can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/GaiaLibra and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/politicalsaurus

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