Another Suspect Arrested In Relation To Jan 6 Capitol Riots

Andrew Taake, a 32-year-old man from Houston, was arrested on Friday on the charges of attacking a police officer with a metal whip and pepper spray – and then bragged about it on Bumble, a dating app. The FBI received a tip from that bubble user who shared the screenshots of his messages on January 9.

According to the prosecutors, he was in Washington on January 6 where he used the dating app. When asked by match if he was near the capitol that day, he claimed that he was in the building for 30 minutes. He told his match that he was peacefully standing there while he was pepper-sprayed, tear-gassed, and hit with batons. However, the security footage shows that he attacked two police officers with a metal whip and then pepper-sprayed them.

Taake is not the first man to be arrested because of his match on a dating app. Robert Chapman, another man from New York, was arrested in April for similarly bragging about his involvement in the capitol riots on Bumble. Chapman told his match that “he did storm the capitol” and “made it all the way into Statuary Hall”.

On July 23, Taake appeared in the Southern Court of Texas. He was charged with assault, resisting or impeding officers, knowingly entering a restricted building, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building, and obstruction of an official proceeding.