Illinois Man Charged With Firing a Handgun on Capitol Grounds on Jan. 6

A man identified by the FBI as John Banuelos fires two shots into the air from scaffolding near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Derrick Evans/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

A suburban Chicago man believed to be shown on newly surfaced video firing a handgun into the air near the U.S. Capitol has been charged by federal prosecutors with five Jan. 6 crimes.

John Emanuel Banuelos, 39, of Summit, Illinois, is named in a criminal complaint unsealed on March 11 with carrying and discharging a firearm on Capitol property on Jan. 6, 2021.

It is the only known case of a rioter firing a weapon near the Capitol or other Washington protest sites on Jan. 6.

Mr. Banuelos was arrested by the FBI at his sister’s home in the southwestern Chicago suburb of Summit on March 8.

He is charged with obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, discharging a firearm on Capitol grounds, carrying a firearm on Capitol grounds, and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building.

Mr. Banuelos made an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Chicago on March 8. He remains in custody pending a detention hearing on March 13.

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According to a statement of facts filed with the criminal complaint in Washington, the FBI has been aware of Mr. Banuelos’s identity since February 2021, when a caller to the National Threat Operations Center (NTOC) identified him in a photo posted on the FBI’s Jan. 6 most-wanted website.

At just before 1:30 p.m. on Jan. 6, U.S. Capitol Police security video appears to show Mr. Banuelos “holding up his gloved hand to form the shape of a ‘finger gun’” and simulating “firing multiple times in the direction of officers,” the FBI said in charging documents.

When Utah police questioned Mr. Banuelos in a fatal stabbing case in the summer of 2021, he told them he was pictured in a Vice News video from the Capitol on Jan. 6.

In that video, a man matching Mr. Banuelos’s description flashes a gun tucked into his belt while pushing backward against the police line on the west plaza just before 2 p.m.

The online sleuth group Sedition Hunters dubbed him #Cowpoke and reported him to the FBI in 2021.

Jan. 6 defendant William Pope showed #Cowpoke in a February 2022 video featuring suspicious actors.

In February 2024, former Jan. 6 defendant Derrick Evans released video that appeared to show Mr. Banuelos climbing the southwest inauguration scaffolding and firing two rounds into the air just after 2:30 p.m.

John Emanuel Banuelos appears to flash a handgun on the west plaza of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (U.S. Department of Justice/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

That video raised questions about why someone known to the FBI for more than three years who publicly flashed a firearm had not been arrested.

An FBI special agent interviewed Mr. Banuelos on Jan. 19, 2024.

According to the charging documents, a social media account under Mr. Banuelos’s name “appears to show Banuelos racking the slide of a semi-automatic weapon” on a video posted in October 2023.

The message was directed to the account of someone who had shared the FBI’s poster of Mr. Banuelos on Twitter.

Mr. Banuelos “denied intending to threaten anyone and claimed many of his posts were done by artificial intelligence,” the FBI wrote.

He “agreed to refrain from posting any further threatening messages.”