{"id":47203,"date":"2021-04-23T15:26:21","date_gmt":"2021-04-23T21:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/employee-of-defense-contractor-faces-charges-in-capitol-riot\/"},"modified":"2021-04-23T21:26:21","modified_gmt":"2021-04-23T21:26:21","slug":"employee-of-defense-contractor-faces-charges-in-capitol-riot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/employee-of-defense-contractor-faces-charges-in-capitol-riot\/","title":{"rendered":"Employee of defense contractor faces charges in Capitol riot"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Authorities say Matthew Martin, who holds a security clearance, told the FBI in an interview that he had gone to Washington after reading then-President Donald Trump\u2019s tweets about election fraud claims and acknowledged he was inside the Capitol building during the attack.<\/p>\n<p>The FBI said Martin claimed Capitol guards opened the doors for people to walk into the Capitol rotunda and he later realized that the events at the Capitol were worse than he initially thought. The U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office in Washington didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request Friday for the name of Martin\u2019s employer.<\/p>\n<p>Kitren Fischer, an attorney representing Martin, didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment on her client\u2019s behalf early Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>Martin is the third New Mexican to be charged in the events surrounding the Capitol riot.<\/p>\n<p>Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin, who is also founder of the group Cowboys for Trump, was arrested after he was captured on video on the Capitol steps during the attack.<\/p>\n<p>Griffin\u2019s lawyer has said his client didn\u2019t enter the building. Griffin has denied allegations that he knowingly entered barricaded areas with the intent to disrupt Congress as it considered Electoral College results.<\/p>\n<p>Shawn Bradley Witzemann of Farmington told authorities he was inside the Capitol during the riot as part of his work in livestreaming video at protests and has since claimed he was there as a journalist, according to court records.<\/p>\n<p>Authorities said Witzemann, who takes part in a podcast called \u201cThe Armenian Council for Truth in Journalism,\u201d walked into the Capitol, made his way to the building\u2019s rotunda and shot video with his phone until an officer told him to leave.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Authorities say Matthew Martin, who holds a security clearance, told the FBI in an interview that he had gone to Washington after reading then-President Donald Trump\u2019s tweets about election fraud claims and acknowledged he was inside the Capitol building during the attack. The FBI said Martin claimed Capitol guards opened the doors for people to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[815],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-47203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-associated-press-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47203"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=47203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}