Airport police officer identifies suspect in Capitol riot after disturbance on flight

A man kicked off a flight earlier this month now faces charges in connection with the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot after an airport police officer identified him. 

According to federal court documents, John Lolos was kicked off a Delta Air Lines flight at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Jan. 8 after he caused a disturbance by repeatedly shouting “Trump 2020!”

The airport police officer was “alerted to LOLOS’s activity and witnessed him return to the gate from the airplane, but did not detain or arrest LOLOS when he returned to the gate,” a federal affidavit says. “Delta booked LOLOS a later flight to his destination, and LOLOS continued to wait at the gate.”

The court filing then says that roughly 45 minutes later, the office was scrolling through his Instagram feed when he reportedly saw a video from the Jan. 6 riot in which the man escorted from the plane “can be seen exiting the U.S. Capitol doorway, wearing the same shirt he was wearing the [at] the airport.” 

The court filing adds that the man in the video was waving “a red ‘Trump 2020 Keep American Great’ flag hooked together with the United States flag, yelling ‘we did it, yeah!'”

The officer then reportedly informed other officers of Lolos, at which point they detained him and found the same flags that appeared in the video in Lolos’s possession. 

Lolos now faces charges of unlawfully entering or remaining on restricted property, as well as violent entry and disorderly conduct on the Capitol grounds. 

An attorney for Lolos was not listed in federal court documents. 

Federal authorities have already made more than a hundred arrests in connection with the Capitol riot, which resulted in five deaths, including a Capitol Police officer who sustained injuries while responding to the siege and a woman shot by a plainclothes officer. 

Additional arrests are expected in the coming weeks as former President Trump faces an  impeachment trial in the Senate. The House earlier this month voted to impeach Trump with a single article of “willfully inciting violence against the government of the United States,” following his continued unsupported claims that the 2020 election was rigged in favor of President Biden. 

House Democrats formally delivered the impeachment article to the Senate late Monday, with a trial expected to begin the week of Feb. 8.

–Updated at 9:14 a.m.