After a long and emotional hearing, a federal magistrate judge determined he could not justify releasing George Tanios, the Morgantown sandwich shop operator who is accused in the Jan. 6 assault of three U.S. Capitol police officers with pepper spray meant as a defense against bears.
One of the officers was Brian Sicknick of the U.S. Capitol Police, who died at the hospital a day later. A cause of death has not yet been released for Sicknick.
Tanios is accused of cooperating with his childhood friend Julian Elie Khater, 32, of Pennsylvania to use the extremely strong spray against officers while other rioters at the Capitol tried to push past a bicycle rack barrier.
Tanios and Khater are charged with nine counts including assaulting three officers with a deadly weapon. The charges are punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
During the three-hour detention hearing today in Clarksburg, federal prosecutors showed video evidence that led to the charges against Tanios, described statements made by Khater about the two coordinating their Capitol trip, recounted the statements of a Morgantown supply store owner who sold the spray to Tanios, and delineated the findings of a search of Tanios’s home.
Some of the grainy videos showed Sicknick, from a distance, leaning on his own knees and coughing in reaction to the chemical spray in some of the last moments of his life. And they showed another officer, identified as C Edwards, struggling to clear the spray from her eyes.
The defense for Tanios tried to counter those stark images with the intimate testimony of those who know Tanios best, including his mother, his sister and the mother of his three young children. Defense attorneys also called as a witness an FBI agent who conducted the initial investigation to ask how some conclusions came together for the case.
U.S. Magistrate Judge John Aloi said he understands how his ruling will affect the lives of those closest to Tanios. And he also understood that Tanios had no earlier serious criminal allegations.
“But I think the context of everything that happened on that day and before are what inform me in my decision-making,” Aloid said.
The mob storming the U.S. Capitol disrupted the constitutional duty of counting Electoral College votes and prompted the evacuations of representatives, senators and Vice President Mike Pence. One woman was fatally shot while trying to climb into the chambers, three others died from “medical emergencies” and more than 100 police officers were injured.
Of the thousands of protesters in Washington, D.C., that day, about 800 went into the Capitol, police have said. About 300 people have been charged so far.
“We’ve created this culture, radicalized by hate and just refusal to accept the result of a democratic process. Given that, two college friends decide, Let’s go,” Aloi said
“Why? Stay at home. Stay at work. Visit your mother.”
Testimony for the defense indicated Tanios had a lot stay home for.
Amanda Plumley, his longtime partner and mother of three young children, including infant twins, said the accusations are out of character for Tanios.
“He just works hard and hangs out with his family,” Plumley testified.
When defense attorneys asked what Tanios is like as a father, Plumley responded simply, “Fun.”
Tanios’s mother, Maguy, told of fleeing war-torn Lebanon to build a better life for her family. Like his siblings, George was raised around the church near the family’s New Jersey home, she said.
“My son, he is not a bad kid. My son was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she testified, starting to weep.
Tanios’s sister, Maria Boutros, described him as a protective older brother. “George was always there to push me to do better. Very outgoing, passionate, driven, honest. He always pushed himself to be the best. If he wanted something he had to work for it.”
These days, Tanios is the president of Morgantown’s Sandwich University, which advertises over-the-top foods. Under the “education” section of his LinkedIn profile, Tanios uses the term “Sandwich Nazi” to describe his experience. The photos that investigators used to identify him at the U.S. Capitol showed him wearing clothing with the logo for Sandwich University.”
Following his arrest a week ago, a federal grand jury on Friday handed down an indictment. That indictment and an earlier FBI affidavit described some of the evidence against Tanios, including video of his actions at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as well as additional new information.
Part of that evidence came from an interview of the owner of ATR Performance in Morgantown. Prosecutors said the owner recalled Tanios walking into the gun shop while on his cell phone, saying he was going to a Trump rally and asking for guidance on whether he could take a firearm to Washington, D.C.
The answer as no.
So, prosecutors said, Tanios asked whether he could take a pepper ball gun.
The answer was again no because it shoots projectiles.
Tanios then asked about and purchased cans of Frontiersman brand bear spray. “Certainly you want as much space between yourself and a charging bear as possible,” the brand advertises.
The owner provided a receipt dated Jan. 5, 5:09 p.m.
Prosecutors said records showed a 39-second call between Tanios’s cell phone number and Khater’s number just minutes before that. A search of Tanios’s home after his arrest, prosecutors said, yielded two canisters of the bear spray and another smaller canister of chemical spray.
Prosecutors say Tanios and Khater drove together to Washington, D.C. They say Khater told them after his arrest that Tanios carried the backpack there for the two of them and that they stayed together on the trip. After the events at the Capitol, prosecutors say Khater told them, the two stayed around for a while taking pictures before driving back together.
For the first time, prosecutors showed videos of the events involving Tanios and Khater in court. In some cases, the video was blurry or sound was difficult to hear because of the chaotic surroundings. But prosecutors contended the videos told the story of Tanios’s role in a very disturbing event.
Prosecutors say one of the videos showed men identified as Khater, wearing a beanie and dark jacket, and Tanios, wearing a red hat, black backpack and dark hooded sweatshirt, walking from a south grassy area toward the Lower West Entrance shortly after 2 p.m. that day.
According to investigators, Khater instructs Tanios to give him the bear spray and reaches into the backpack worn by Tanios. “Hold on, hold on, not yet, not yet… it’s still early,” Tanios replies.
“It’s a little bit hard to hear because of all of the noise going on in the background,” acknowledged prosecutor Sarah Wagner with the U.S. Attorneys Office in Clarksburg.
Body camera video from Capitol Police officers showed Khater walking through the crowd within a few steps of the bike rack barrier and directly across from a line of law enforcement officers including Sicknick, Edwards and Chapman.
As rioters begin pulling on the bike rack barrier, Khater can be seen on another video holding his right arm up, apparently holding the canister and aiming it in the officers’ direction while moving his arm from side to side.
The surveillance footage shows the three officers reacting one by one to something striking them in the face. Prosecutors say all three officers were temporarily blinded, temporarily disabled from performing their duties and needed medical attention.
Officer Edwards experienced scarring under her eyes and required followup care with a dermatologist.
Defense for Tanios began trying to pull apart some of those events, questioning what evidence showed Tanios actually intended for Khater to pull the bear spray out of the bag, aim it at the officers and shoot.
They also contended that the facts so far are limited to what federal prosecutors have released.
“I’m very unhappy to hear ‘in concert,’ in coordination,'” said Elizabeth Gross, a defense attorney for Tanios. “There was no evidence of that today.”
Wagner, the federal prosecutor, said there’s no question the two were working together.
“Although Mr. Tanios did not do the actual spraying, he did assist Mr. Khater in purchasing the chemical spray and the planning,” Wagner told the magistrate judge. “He was assisting Mr. Khater in every other step of the coordinated attack.”
Aloi concluded the allegations are so serious that he has a duty to keep Tanios in jail until trial. The two had choices every step of the way, Aloi said.
“It’s hard for me to look at this as anything other than an assault on our nation’s honor and everything that’s important to us as a people,” the magistrate judge said. “I don’t know if that represents who you are Mr. Tanios. I don’t know that it represented a lot of people that day. But what is it that causes that behavior?”
The magistrate judge concluded, “My obligation is to the safety of our community, and I don’t think I’ve ever seeen anything play out in a way that was more dangerous to our community. In your own way, Mr. Tanios, you chose to play a part in that.”