Although with the post-Donald Trump Republican Party you never know, everything indicates that Ryan Kelley’s race to become governor of Michigan in the elections next November has been cut short this Thursday, with his arrest by the FBI. He is accused of participating in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as reported by the United States Department of Justice.
The arrest is for misdemeanors, allegedly committed when a mob harangued by Trump marched in Washington and took the Capitol by force to prevent the transfer of presidential powers to Joe Biden, whose electoral victory questioned (and still does, without evidence) Republican tycoon. Kelley, 40, was in Washington that day, and has been detained at his Allentown home. As can be read in the biography of his candidacy website, the candidate for governor has lived in the western part of the state “for 35 years.” The FBI has also searched the house, which he shares with his wife and his five children. This afternoon he is summoned to appear before the judge of the District Court for the Western District of Michigan, in the city of Grand Rapids.
The complaint states that he is accused of acts of violence against persons or property in a restricted location, damaging federal property, public disorder, and entering a building or restricted land without permission. It describes how she used his cell phone to record the crowd assaulting Capitol Police officers and repeatedly encouraging those behind him to continue their march toward the building.
On his website, Kelley, one of the five Republican candidates for the post of Governor of the State, who is planning to hold primaries in August, presents himself as a graduate in electronic engineering who, inspired by the Trump slogan of America First, aspires to put “Michigan first.” He worked in the telecommunications business until 2011, when he ventured “into business life”. As of 2019 he is “the owner of a small real estate company”.
The following year, the emergence of the coronavirus and its “invasion of all facets of our lives” pushed him to become “a voice of freedom, hope and reason for the state of Michigan”, always according to the texts posted on the website of your campaign. In those months he opposed lockdowns and vaccination mandates, and organized several demonstrations. Those credentials serve him to promise his voters to “stand firm for American values and American history.”
“During the riots that occurred in the United States in the summer of 2020, while exercising your Second Amendment rights [que garantiza la posesión de armas de fuego, Kelley] protected a Civil War statue in his hometown of Allendale, when Black Lives Matter and [el movimiento antifascista] Antifa threatened to bring her down. The statue is still standing there today”, can be read in the biography of the candidate, whose narration stops at that moment.
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There is no trace on the page of any allusion to the insurrection of January 6. The former president is only mentioned in an entry in the section dedicated to the support received by the candidate, which, among others, includes that of Londa Gatt, a member of an association called Michigan Bikers for Trump.
His arrest comes on the same day that the commission in charge of investigating the events of January 6 has summoned the nation to the first of the sessions in which they will present their conclusions, after 11 months in which they have interviewed a thousand people and studied some 140,000 documents. It will be broadcast in prime time and promises to share with the public the “never known” about the attack on Capitol Hill.
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