WASHINGTON — Two brothers from Pennsylvania and New Jersey who allegedly attacked a New York Times photographer and stole her camera after storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were arrested by the FBI on Thursday.
Philip Walker, a 52-year-old from Upper Chichester, Pennsylvania, and David Walker, a 49-year-old from Delran, New Jersey, are charged with forcibly taking an item from a person and assault with intent to commit another crime, as well as other standard Jan. 6 offenses for entering the Capitol. Philip Walker is separately charged with willful and malicious destruction of personal property for allegedly throwing the camera into a body of water.
The photographer in question, who is not named in the court documents, is Erin Schaff. She has written about her Jan. 6 attack, saying that rioters at the Capitol threw her to the ground, broke one of her cameras and stole another. (Schaff has covered the fallout from the riots, including photographing another suspect on Jan. 6, named Brian Mock, for backstory on Mock’s relationship with his son, who turned Mock in to the FBI and testified at his father’s trial last year.)
Philip Walker, federal authorities said, gave an interview to the FBI in the week after the Jan. 6 attack in which he admitted to getting into a physical confrontation with a person he said he believed was a member of antifa. Philip Walker said the person fell to the ground and that he took their camera. “He admitted to leaving the Capitol with the camera and throwing it into a body of water while en route to his residence in Pennsylvania,” an FBI affidavit said.
But an account by Schaff, an award-winning photographer, refutes the claim that Philip Walker thought Schaff was a member of “antifa” during the attack (though attacking someone and stealing their camera is a crime, regardless of affiliation). Schaff wrote in a piece published in the hours after the attack that her attackers became even more enraged when they realized she worked for The New York Times.
“When they took my press card, they saw that my ID said The New York Times and they got really angry. They threw me to the ground and tried to take my cameras. I started screaming for help as loud as I could. No one came. People just watched,” she wrote, referring to other rioters at the Capitol. “At that point I thought I was going to be killed and that no one was going to stop them. They ripped one of my cameras off me, broke a lens off the other one and ran away.”
Schaff wrote that she eventually went to the apartment of Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House of Representatives, which was being trashed by other rioters. There she found a place to hide her remaining camera. The camera was broken but not stolen.
Because her press pass was not available, and it had also been stolen, the officers who tried to clear the building did not believe her claims that she was a journalist when they encountered her, Schaff said.
“They pulled out their guns, pointed them, and yelled at me to get on my hands and knees,” Schaff wrote. “As I lay on the floor, two other photojournalists entered the lobby and began yelling, ‘She’s a journalist!'”
Schaff referred NBC News on Thursday to a New York Times spokesperson, who said the newspaper was grateful to authorities “for their persistence in pursuing justice in this case.”
“Independent, fact-based journalism is a cornerstone of democracy, and attacks on reporters should be a serious concern to anyone who cares about an informed citizenry,” Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha said in a statement.
Online “incitement hunters” — the citizen investigators who helped the FBI arrest hundreds of rioters on Jan. 6 — were frustrated by the slow pace of the investigation after helping the FBI build the case against the men. As NBC News reported earlier this year, federal authorities have a public call in January for information about one of the suspects, even though investigators said the names of both brothers were already in the agency’s possession.
About 1,500 people have been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and federal prosecutors have secured more than 1,000 convictions. Hundreds of defendants have received probation, but more than 600 have been sentenced to terms ranging from a few days behind bars to 22 years in federal prison, the sentence imposed on the leader of the Proud Boys who was convicted of seditious conspiracy.
In court filings, federal prosecutors have collected extensive video evidence of Donald Trump supporters using firearms, stun guns, flagpoles, fire extinguishers, bike racks, batons, a metal whip, office furniture, pepper spray, bear spray, a tomahawk axe, an ax, a hockey stick, gloves, a baseball bat, a giant “Trump” billboard, “Trump” flags, a pitchfork, pieces of wood, crutches and even an explosive device during the brutal attack that left at least 140 police officers injured.
Former President Trump faces federal criminal charges for his actions during and leading up to the Jan. 6 attack, with an indictment from a federal grand jury alleging he engaged in a campaign to spread “unfounded, objectively unreasonable and ever-changing” misinformation about the 2020 election in order to remain in office. He has pleaded not guilty.
While many of the Jan. 6 defendants still cling to false beliefs about the 2020 election, multiple judges have said they now feel like gullible “idiots” for falling for the lies Trump spread. During an argument this week, Trump again refused to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 presidential election and dodged questions about his actions during the siege of the Capitol.
Trump has called the Jan. 6 defendants “hostages,” “warriors” and “incredible patriots” and claimed during Tuesday’s debate that the Capitol riot suspects had been “treated so poorly.” He has repeatedly pledged to pardon “a large portion” of the Jan. 6 defendants and said he would “absolutely” consider pardoning every single Jan. 6 rioter — a group that would include hundreds of criminals convicted of assaulting police officers — if he were elected on Nov. 5.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
