A Douglassville man stole a sign from the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, agents say. Three years later, it led to his arrest.
As with many of the more than 1,200 people charged to date with participating in the riot, it was Ian MacBride’s social media bravado that ultimately led agents to his door, prosecutors say.
After joining the mob that overran the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, federal prosecutors say Ian MacBride returned home to Southeastern Pennsylvania with a souvenir to remember his role in the historic attack.
He gave a filched “Area Closed” sign, complete with stickers identifying it as property of Capitol police, pride of place hanging over the bar in the basement of his Douglassville home. He shared photos of the keepsake on his various social media accounts and online, alt-right message boards, government lawyers allege.
And three years after the riot that caused millions of dollars in damage, injured dozens of officers and interrupted the peaceful transfer of presidential power, it was those photos of MacBride’s trophy that led federal agents to his door.
FBI agents arrested the 43-year-old manager of a Chester County home renovation company on Thursday on misdemeanor counts including disorderly conduct on restricted grounds and theft of public property.
And as with many of the more than 1,200 people charged to date with participating in the riot — including more than 90 from Pennsylvania — it was MacBride’s social media bravado that ultimately led to his undoing.
Federal investigators have spent countless hours poring over thousands of hours of video footage and still images of the riot shared online to identify the thousands of people believed to have participated in the attack. And even three years after the incident, they continue to make arrests.
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Agents say they first received tips about MacBride’s presence at the Capitol within days of the riot after he posted to Facebook claiming that the entire affair had been a set-up by police.
“They antagonized and riled us up,” he said, “then opened up the barricades and stood to the side, letting us flow up the remainder of the steps into the building. After they let a certain amount of people flow in, the door was forced, closed and barricaded.”
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But that sentiment seemed to conflict with statements he’d made just days earlier on the alt-right, online message board Patriots.Win announcing his plans to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, the day members of Congress gathered to certify Joe Biden’s election victory.
“We will literally drag them out of the Capitol,” he said, according to court documents filed in his case. “Don’t f— push us.”
Prosecutors painted MacBride as a frequent presence on the board and a similar site — TheDonald.Win — where posters speak in the coded language of alt-right memes.
Posting under the screen name PennsylPede1776 — an apparent play on “centipedes,” or a slang term popular among right-wingers online when referring to each other — his posts are rife with references to Kekistan, a fictional country imagined by message board posters to be run by the alt-right, and sporadic references to his presence at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
He even used the sites to look for dates, federal agents said, referencing in court documents Thursday a Christmas-day post just weeks before the riot.
“If there are any lady pedes looking, I’m a 40, SWM, 5′11″ tattooed homeowner, full-time job into cars/trucks/guns, BBQ (which makes me a little chubby but I’m working on it) and everyone says I’m hilarious,” MacBride wrote, according to the complaint.
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On Jan. 6, investigators say, MacBride was among the first wave of rioters to breach the Capitol building, scaling the northwest staircase and crawling in through windows near the Senate Wing door that others had busted in with wooden planks, stolen police shields, and other blunt objects.
He carried a Kekistan flag and a “Make America Great Again” banner, both of which agents maintain they later found in his home alongside the stolen “Area Closed” sign.
Surveillance footage allegedly showed MacBride milling around the Capitol crypt and joining a crowd that pushed back a line of police trying to keep rioters at bay. And agents say cell tower tracking pinpointed his location in the building for roughly 21 minutes that day.
And if his social media posts are any indication, he harbored no reservations in the aftermath.
“I don’t regret my part in occupying the building,” he posted to TheDonald.Win. “It’s OUR house … They work for us, and they need to be reminded of it.”
MacBride remained in FBI custody and did not immediately return requests for comment Thursday. Court records did not indicate whether he had yet retained an attorney.