A pro-Trump rioter was arrested in New York on Thursday (April 22) after his match on an online dating app told officers that he admitted to his participation in the Capitol insurrection.
According to court filings, authorities were contacted roughly a week after the riots by an individual who claimed to have information about one of the many people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
The person revealed that during a text exchange with Bumble match Robert Chapman, he proudly declared, “I did storm the Capitol.” Screenshots of the messages — which were provided to law enforcement — show that he boasted about making it “all the way into Statuary Hall” and a few of his other unrelated proud moments, to which the person frankly responded, “We are not a match.”
The FBI subsequently reviewed footage of the riots in which an individual who appeared to be Chapman was by the Statuary Hall mentioned in his text conversation on Bumble. Investigators compared the image to a 2017 photo of him in the Capitol building in an attempt to confirm his identity.
Additonally, the FBI was told of a Facebook post that showed him in the Statuary Hall. They later discovered a few posts from Chapman, who boasted about his involvement under the name Robert Erik. “I’M FUCKING INSIDE THE CAPITOL!!!” he wrote.
The court documents, which were filed by Kenneth Kroll — a member of the FBI Task Force Office — claims Chapman likely entered or remained in the U.S. Capitol knowingly, uttered threatening or abuse language, or engaged in disorderly or disruptive conduct “with the intent to impede, disrupt or disturb the orderly conduct of a session of Congress or either House of Congress.”
He was arrested and charged with knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.
FBI