(Ken Silva, Headline USA) A former government employee who worked in the intelligence community was arrested this week for falsely accusing at least seven of his colleagues of participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill uprising.
According to the Justice Department, the defendant, Mike Zapata, used a proxy web browser and “burner” email accounts to submit false tips to the FBI about his former colleagues.
Charging documents don’t identify what agency or agencies Zapata and his colleagues worked for, but they do specify the agencies as being part of the intelligence community. There are eight victims listed on an FBI affidavit, but details for “Victim 4” were omitted.
One of the victims was Zapata’s boss.
“ZAPATA previously worked with Victim 6, who had interviewed and hired ZAPATA and then served as ZAPATA’s program manager. The FBI has interviewed Victim 6, who reported that Victim 6 was working from their Virginia home during the attack at the Capitol on January 6, 2021,” said the arrest warrant affidavit, which was signed by a Special Agent with the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, who works on an FBI cyber task force.
“Victim 6’s employer provided information related to Victim 6’s activity on their virtual private network that demonstrated Victim 6 was working remotely on January 6. Victim 6 denied coordinating any of the January 6 attack at the Capitol.”
According to the charging documents, Zapata told the FBI that his boss “attended the capitol riot insurrection.”
“[He/she] was directly involved in coordination of the riot that lead [sic] to the deaths of 6 people,” Zapata allegedly told the FBI’s tip line. “[He/she] uses [his/her] clearance to continue supporting [an intelligence agency] and accesses classified information.”
Investigators were able to track down Zapata by obtaining his personal information from the company that provided his proxy web browser. Zapata’s internet history also appears to be incriminating, according to the charging documents.
For example, “On April 11, 2021, Company A’s logs showed ZAPATA’s user account accessed the FBI’s tips site, conducted research on Victims 7 and 8, conducted a Google search for the term ‘fbi mole,’ accessed a disposable email service, and accessed the website of an Office of Inspector General for an IC agency,” the charging documents state.
Zapata’s case was first reported by Politico and has yet to appear on the federal court docket.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
