Chicago police officer and sister found guilty of breaching the Capitol on Jan. 6
A Chicago police officer and his sister were found guilty Friday of breaching the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after a federal jury trial.
Karol Chwiesiuk was charged in 2021 in a criminal complaint in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., with five misdemeanor counts, including entering a restricted building, disrupting government business and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds with intent to impede a congressional proceeding. His sister Agnieszka Chwiesiuk was charged with four misdemeanor counts.
Jurors began deliberating Friday morning in D.C. after attorneys delivered closing arguments the previous day, according to court records. The trial began Monday with jury selection.
The jury convicted Chwiesiuk of four of the charges related to breaching the Capitol building, but it acquitted him of a charge that accused him of entering a Democratic senator’s office.
The criminal complaint had alleged that Chwiesiuk broke into Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley’s office and took a selfie while he wore a hooded sweatshirt with a Chicago Police Department logo on it.
Prosecutors also accused him of sending texts to a friend that said, “Busy planning how to (expletive) up commies” two days before traveling to the capital for a rally for then-President Donald Trump. On Jan. 6, prosecutors alleged, Chwiesiuk texted the same friend, “We inside the capital lmfao.”
After the siege made national news, the friend texted Chwiesiuk about it, who replied “Yeah I was there” and, with a racial slur, “(Expletive) don’t snitch.”
When agents went to arrest Karol Chwiesiuk at the family’s home on the Northwest Side in June 2021, his sister “spontaneously” asked if they were going to arrest her too, according to the complaint.
They told her they were not detaining her, but later recovered photographs from her brother’s damaged cellphone that showed the two of them at the rally and later inside the Capitol, the complaint said.
After Karol Chwiesiuk’s arrest, his lawyer told the Chicago Tribune he had been a Chicago police officer since 2018 and was most recently assigned to patrol the Harrison District. At the time, he was stripped of his police powers and reassigned to desk duty.
Then-Chicago police Superintendent David Brown at the time said the charges against the officer made his “blood boil.”
“And yes, if these allegations are true, it breaks my heart. Participating in the siege on the Capitol in any way was a betrayal of everything we stand for, the oath (and) the law,” he said at a 2021 news conference.
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