A former Drug Enforcement Administration special agent was arrested Tuesday for allegedly trespassing on Capitol grounds with a gun during the Jan. 6 riot — and later lying to the feds about why he was there.
Mark Sami Ibrahim, of Orange County, Calif., is said to have joined the mob that stormed the restricted area around the Capitol, though he is not accused of actually breaking into the building, according to a criminal complaint.
Federal prosecutors say Ibrahim repeatedly flashed his badge and DEA-issued handgun to other rioters and posed for pictures with those items on Capitol grounds.
Charging documents include photos Ibrahim sent to a WhatsApp group chat with at least five other law enforcement officers, including one of him holding a flag that read “Liberty or Death” next to the collapsed barricades.
Prosecutors say Ibrahim also posted to the group chat a video of protester Ashli Babbitt being moved on a gurney into an ambulance after she was fatally shot by a Capitol police officer during the siege.
Footage also showed Ibrahim climbing on the Peace Memorial at the foot of Capitol Hill, the court docs state.
Ibrahim was a probationary employee of the DEA, and had given the agency notice of his planned resignation several weeks prior to Jan. 6. He was on personal leave at the time of the siege.
Ibrahim allegedly claimed to investigators that he was at the Capitol to help a friend who was documenting the event for the FBI.
But the friend denied that he was there in any official capacity, and said Ibrahim had made up the story in an effort to “cover his ass,” according to the complaint.
The pal said Ibrahim went to the rally “in order to promote himself.”
Ibrahim “had been thinking about his next move after leaving the DEA and wanted the protests to be his stage for launching a ‘Liberty Tavern’ political podcast and cigar brand,” the pal said, according to the complaint.
Though he allegedly admitted to being on Capitol grounds, Ibrahim denied in interviews with investigators that he had displayed his badge and gun.
He was suspended from the agency in March.
In an interview with Fox News that month, Ibrahim said that after the riot, he “got on a flight back to LA. I had my badge and gun taken away from me. I was escorted off the premises to my apartment like a criminal, and I was fired after being suspended for two months, for performance issues.”
He claimed he decided to document the riot when “the crowd began to be hostile toward law enforcement” and “handed everything over to the FBI so those criminals could face justice.”
His attorney Darren Richie has previously said Ibrahim was “not part of, affiliated with nor participatory in any trespass or violent acts and vehemently denounces them. Those participants comprised only a fraction of the total attendees.”
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