State Department diplomatic security officer arrested on Jan. 6 charges

WASHINGTON — A man who worked for the State Department as a diplomatic security officer was arrested by the FBI on Tuesday in Washington in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Kevin Alstrup faces the same four misdemeanor charges that have typically been given to non-violent Jan. 6 participants who entered the Capitol building during the attack: entering and remaining in a restricted building; disorderly and disruptive conduct; disorderly conduct; and unlawful picketing or parading.

After Alstrup’s email address popped up in a Google response to a government search warrant for devices that were inside the Capitol building on Jan. 6, the bureau researched Alstrup and obtained information that he “was employed by the United States Department of State (USDOS) as a Diplomatic Security Officer (DSO),” according to an FBI affidavit. In that role, an FBI special agent wrote, Alstrup would have been “familiar with providing security and protection for high-ranking government officials or sensitive locations, like embassies.”

His current status with the State Department is unclear. NBC News has reached out to the department for comment.

The FBI found posts that Alstrup made on social media showing the outside of the Capitol building on Jan. 6, which the FBI said illustrated the “obvious presence of barriers outside the U.S. Capitol building, which marked the restricted area.”

Alstrup’s supervisor confirmed Alstrup’s identification in photos from inside the Capitol, the FBI said. The bureau determined that he spent approximately 28 minutes inside, including in the crypt, a room in the center of the Capitol on the first floor.

During his time inside the building, the FBI said that Alstrup was taking photos of other rioters entering and exiting the building through a broken window and that alarms “audibly and continuously sounded” as a Capitol Police officer told rioters to leave and gestured for them to do so.

After he left the Capitol, Alstrup was picked up on body camera footage from a Metropolitan Police Department officer, the FBI affidavit said.

More than 1,250 people have been arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and federal prosecutors have secured about 900 convictions. Online sleuths have identified hundreds more participants in the attack, and the statute of limitations expires in less than two years, in early 2026.