WASHINGTON — Nearly three years ago, a young professional in the nation’s capital sat in his apartment after the Jan. 6 attack and saw the FBI asking for help identifying the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol. . So she opened the dating app Bumble, changed her political beliefs to conservative, and started swiping.
The woman used an app to target several Donald Trump supporters who were identified as being in the Washington, D.C., area in an attempt to extract illegal confessions from people who believed Trump’s lies about the 2020 presidential election and flocked to the city. I got in touch.
On Wednesday, one of the Bumble users she filed with the FBI pleaded guilty to assaulting a law enforcement officer with chemical spray while holding a metal whip.
Andrew Turk, 35, of Texas, pleaded guilty in a hearing before a federal district judge to assaulting a law enforcement officer with a deadly and dangerous weapon, using a bear repellent to attack the officer. He admitted using both the spray and the metal whip. Carl Nichols of Washington; Turke, who had been ordered into pretrial detention after his arrest in July 2021, appeared in a sparse courtroom Wednesday wearing an orange prison jumpsuit.
Turke said he was “guilty” and told Nichols he was entering the plea voluntarily.
The woman, referred to as “Witness 1” in Mr. Turke’s FBI affidavit, previously said that “comicably minimal ego-strokes” from her led Trump supporters to question the Jan. 6 activities. He recalls how he gave the information to her.
“I think I felt some ‘civic duty,’ but to tell you the truth, I was mostly just pissed off and thinking about these people,” she said, speaking anonymously for fear of online retaliation. Ta.
Her strategy, she said, was to repeatedly tell the men, “Wow, crazy, tell me more” until she had enough information to send the information to the FBI.
She ended up chatting with about a dozen men in the days after the Jan. 6 attack, as they parroted debunked talking points about the 2020 election they had heard. They said they made comments that were “very targeted at MAGA rallies.” From a prominent Republican. I couldn’t see her rolling her eyes on the other end of the phone.
“They just wanted someone to vent a lot of these ideas to, and I seemed like a willing participant,” she said. “I didn’t have to twist my arm at all to start talking to them about it. Basically I was like, ‘Wow, that’s really cool, but what are we going to do with it?’ what else? ‘That was pretty much all I needed. ”
“One of my friends said, ‘You basically just got all these confessions just thinking, ‘Haha!’ So what do you do? ” she said.
In Taake’s case, Witness 1 stumbled upon his profile and started asking questions, and noticed that he was very happy to show off to a woman he had just met virtually. NBC News viewed screenshots of messages exchanged between Thake and the woman within the app.
“Were you close to all the activity?” she asked.
“Yes,” Tatake-san answered. “From the beginning.” He sent a selfie taken right after he was pepper-sprayed.
In the days following the attack, she continued to chat with Mr. Tarke, lying that she was unable to video chat because she was in a beer garden with a friend. She tried to gather more information and asked if she planned to return for Joe Biden’s inauguration.
“It may depend on the outcome of the election,” Turke wrote. “Biden is not yet president…and there is too much incriminating information to come to light. Many patriots are gearing up and ready to back down depending on what happens.”
Turke, a self-employed handyman with a pressure washing business, had a prior felony conviction, but authorities found multiple guns in his home when they took him into custody. When Turke stormed the Capitol, he was being held on bond in an unrelated case for allegedly soliciting a minor online. Court records in Harris County, Texas, show the case is still ongoing.
“He has a desire to physically assault police officers with bear spray and metal whips,” Tamaki said. He is on bail and under conditions of release for the serious crime of inciting a minor.prove by clear and convincing evidence that he poses a tangible threat both to the community and to specific individuals,” a federal judge wrote in ordering Mr. Turke’s detention pending trial. , written in bold for emphasis.
His sentencing was set for March 26th.
Taake wasn’t the only defendant arrested on January 6th, thanks to brave Bumble users. Robert Chapman was sentenced to home detention on a misdemeanor charge after being turned over for a Bumble match.
Speaking to NBC News after Taake’s guilty plea, the woman who sent his identity to the FBI said she was happy to see Taake held accountable.
“Finally,” the woman told NBC News on Wednesday. She said: “It was really amazing to see him keep defending that attack for so long, and I’m even happier that he got caught with it.”
“I don’t regret anything at all (laughs),” the woman told NBC News on Wednesday.