Federal authorities have charged a New York man in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol who was identified because he wore his high school football varsity jacket when he joined the mob trying to overturn the 2020 election for former President Donald Trump.
Brian Gundersen, a former varsity football player for Byram Hills High School in North Castle Township, New York, is facing charges after the FBI received tips about a man seen storming the Capitol while wearing a letterman’s jacket. The jacket included the name of his high school and his former jersey number.
Gundersen is reportedly 26 years old and reportedly graduated high school nearly nine years ago, in 2012.
Federal authorities received a number of tips about Gundersen, and the North Castle Township police chief called the FBI’s New York Operations Center to inform them about the man in the varsity jacket. Numerous tipsters provided the FBI with photos of Gundersen wearing the same jacket, including selfies he’d posted with Fox News personalities.
A person with a close personal relationship with Gundersen, according to the feds, also said that Gundersen was “an avid supporter of former President Trump and a follower of commentator Nick Fuentes,” a far-right white nationalist figure who was suspended from YouTube last year for violating hate speech policies.
Gundersen sat down with FBI agents on the day before President Joe Biden was inaugurated. He initially claimed that he never entered the U.S. Capitol but later admitted he had, but he claimed he was pushed into the building by the crowd. He consented to a search of his phone, which turned up a message in which he referenced a photo showing members of Congress taking cover during the attack on the Capitol as “scared little bitches.”
In one message, sent two days after the attack, Gundersen admitted his role in the attack.
“We all stormed the us capital and tried to take over the government,” he wrote. “We failed but fuck it.”