DEA agent says he was wrongly fired and is now under investigation for being at Capitol during insurrection
A US Drug Enforcement Administration agent suspended for being at the US Capitol during the January 6 insurrection said Tuesday that he has since been fired from the agency and is now “the subject of a criminal investigation,” even though he claims he “never even stepped foot on the stairs of the Capitol building.”
Mark Ibrahim said in an interview with Fox News that after the attack on the Capitol he “got on a flight back to LA. I had my badge and gun taken away from me. I was escorted off the premises to my apartment like a criminal, and I was fired after being suspended for two months, for performance issues.”
“Now, I’m actually the subject of a criminal investigation,” he told the network.
The Justice Department declined to comment on Ibrahim’s assertion that he is under investigation, and Ibrahim’s attorney, Darren Richie, declined to provide further information to CNN.
The DEA said in a statement to CNN that per agency policy, it “cannot comment on specific personnel matters” protected by privacy laws.
Ibrahim’s firing adds to a growing list of consequences facing people who were present at the US Capitol on January 6 when a pro-Trump mob stormed the building in an attack that left five dead. The government has charged nearly 300 others in connection to the insurrection. The rioters were attempting to stop the Senate from counting the electoral votes to confirm Joe Biden’s presidential win.
Ibrahim, who said he is now taking “legal action against the DEA” said in the interview that he was at the Capitol on January 6 because a “friend I served in Iraq with asked me to help him get there for documentation purposes and we were just spectators.”
“When the crowd began to be hostile toward law enforcement, me being law enforcement myself, I started to document everything and, via my friend, we handed everything over to the FBI so those criminals could face justice,” he said.
His lawyer previously said Ibrahim was at the Capitol to enjoy “an important day in history” and that “Mr. Ibrahim was not part of, affiliated with nor participatory in any trespass or violent acts and vehemently denounces them.”
Richie also said earlier this month that Ibrahim was “left perplexed and damaged … knowing how easily and quickly the DEA compromised” his pride as a member of the agency “that professes support for this nation and its security.”
