Hours after siblings Felicia and Cory Konold were arrested by the FBI and accused of being at the forefront of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, their father got off work remodeling houses in Tucson and turned on the news.
“We saw a picture of my daughter and my son on the news, News 4, from a distance, but zoomed in with a circle on their faces. I was like, ‘What?’” Robert Konold, 62, told the Arizona Daily Star Thursday evening.
“It’s a shock,” he said. “I’m just a deer in headlights at this point.”
Rather than join a violent attempt to take over the U.S. Capitol, Robert Konold thought his son and daughter, both in their 20s, were “just going to go out there with everybody else and do a little peaceful protest, you know?” he said.
“I thought, ‘Good, go support the president,’” he said, referring to then-President Donald Trump. “Everybody else was going,” said Konold, 62. “Young people do that, you know, ‘be a part of history’ kind of deal.”
Special agents with the FBI and members of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested Felicia Konold of Marana and Cory Konold of Tucson around 7 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 11, according to a statement from the FBI’s office in Phoenix. They were taken into custody without incident. The FBI did not say where they are being held.
The FBI included photos of Felicia and Cory Konold as evidence they were at the forefront of rioters who overwhelmed police and forced their way into the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote.
They were charged with conspiracy, civil disorder, obstruction of an official proceeding, knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, according to a complaint filed Wednesday in federal court in Washington, D.C.
The FBI accused Felicia and Cory Konold of marching with a large group of Proud Boys, a far-right group that supported Trump, to the Capitol building. The Anti-Defamation League describes the group as white supremacists, which group leaders have denied. The Southern Poverty Law Center labels the Proud Boys as a hate group.
“Neither of them, as far as I knew, had any affiliation with any group or anything,” Robert Konold said.
Felicia Konold posted a video on social media, according to the FBI, and “celebrated that she had just been ‘recruited’” into a Proud Boys chapter in Kansas City. She displayed a two-sided challenge coin that appeared to bear that chapter’s markings, according to the complaint.
The three defendants charged at the same time as the Konold siblings were William Chrestman, Christopher Kuehne and Louis Enrique Colon, all residents of Kansas City.
At several points, Felicia Konold was seen standing next to Chrestman as they tried to force a police officer to release one of the rioters, the complaint says. Chrestman was dressed in tactical gear and carried a wooden club or ax handle wrapped in a blue flag. He faces an additional charge of threatening to assault a federal officer.
“I’m just wondering how she knew this person,” Robert Konold said, referring to the Proud Boys. “How did she meet them?”
He said his relationship with Felicia became distant in recent years, particularly after she was involved in a car wreck last year that left her with serious injuries and a DUI charge. “Ever since then, I haven’t talked to her or heard from her or anything.”
He said he would have known if Cory, whom he sees frequently and used to work with, had joined a group like the Proud Boys. “We’re tight. He tells me everything,” he said.
He did “not at all” expect that Cory, who he described as a “normal, average fricking kid,” would get involved with a riot.
“He was more there, I think, at that point, to keep an eye on his sister. That’s the only thing I can come up with,” he said.
Felicia is the one who wanted to go and Cory was going to help with the driving, Robert Konold said.
“He was just going to drive with his sister because she was going to go regardless,” he said. “He figured, ‘hey, road trip, and we can both share driving.’”
The father said he still suspects the riots were not caused by Trump supporters.
“It couldn’t have been Trump guys,” he said. “I’m thinking it could’ve been more antifa or you know Democrats wanting to make Trump look bad or something,” he said. “No normal Republican would go nuts.”
The FBI’s assistant director in charge of the Washington field office, Steven D’Antuono, said in a Jan. 8 call with reporters that there was “no indication” antifa activists were involved in the Capitol riot.
The Associated Press reported that to date, federal prosecutors have charged more than 200 people from 41 states in connection with the riot, and authorities continue to make arrests.
More than a dozen Proud Boys have been among those charged, many of them accused of conspiracy, including Florida organizer Joseph Biggs; Nick Ochs, founder of the group’s Hawaii chapter; and Dominic “Spaz” Pezzola and William Pepe of New York.
