Retired attorney who protested at Rep. Cutler’s house sought by FBI for Jan. 6 role

• By Brett Sholtis/LNP | LancasterOnline

This story is published in partnership with our sister newsroom LNP | LancasterOnline. For more coverage, click here.

His name is Robert P. LoBue—a father, a husband, and a retired lawyer who once lived in Chester County and briefly served as a deputy Attorney General in Delaware. But to the online sleuths who’ve sought to identify the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters, LoBue has another name: #GreenGramps.

That’s a reference to his age—LoBue was nearly 70 years old at the time—and to the green puffer jacket he wore when he and a younger companion, called #KidRailing by the same amateur investigators, were captured on video in the crowd that overwhelmed police and breached a barricade on Capitol grounds. LoBue wore the same green jacket during a protest in Lancaster County outside Republican state Rep. Bryan Cutler’s house days before the Capitol attack.

Videos show LoBue and his companion were part of the first wave of rioters to confront U.S. Capitol Police, as they and thousands of others took up President Donald Trump’s call for his supporters to march to the Capitol as a show of force to pressure Congress and Vice President Mike Pence to reject Joe Biden’s presidential election win.

LoBue’s actions that afternoon got him yet another designation, this time from the FBI: Photograph #054 AFO. His traveling companion got a photo and an “AFO” designation as well (in his case, #321).

Help #FBIWFO find these men who allegedly assaulted police officers during the U.S. Capitol riots on January 6, 2021. Submit tips via https://t.co/t8G7LO4hxu. If you know the man on the left, refer to photo 54 in your tip, and if you know the man on the right, refer to photo 321. pic.twitter.com/bMMQPgvTz8

— FBI Washington Field (@FBIWFO) May 12, 2022

“Individuals whose photographs are preceded by the letters AFO on the FBI’s U.S. Capitol Violence Seeking Information Gallery are suspected of having committed assault on a federal law enforcement officer,” said Carrie Adamowski, an FBI spokeswoman for the Philadelphia division.

Adamowski declined to say whether the FBI has identified the two men shown in the photos, noting “it’s our standard practice and DOJ policy to neither confirm nor deny the existence of investigations.” LoBue, who bought a home in Naples, Florida in February 2021 and sold his Wilmington, Delaware residence shortly after, didn’t respond to requests for comment left on his voicemail and sent by text message and certified mail.

(There is a New York-based attorney also named Robert P. LoBue, and there is a Robert LoBue in West Chester Pa., who is a business consultant and is on the faculty of a German university. These LoBues are unrelated to this story).

Acting on a tip, LNP | LancasterOnline confirmed that LoBue is the person shown in the images on the FBI website. Four people who knew LoBue viewed the images at LNP | LancasterOnline’s request, including former neighbors and professional acquaintances. Some also viewed video footage and other photos. They spoke on condition of anonymity, citing security concerns and the potential for professional repercussions.

“My jaw dropped the first time I could see his face on one of those videos,” said one former colleague. “We all took an oath as attorneys. Some of us have honored it. Some of us have not. I can’t think of anything that is more contrary to that oath than to take part in a riot that seeks to interrupt Congress.”

Additionally, these same sources viewed three photos of LoBue that were taken by an LNP | LancasterOnline photojournalist on Dec. 30, 2020, outside of then-Speaker of the House Cutler’s office in Quarryville and his nearby residence in Drumore Township. At both places that day, dozens of people called on Cutler to reject the Pennsylvania presidential election results that showed Democrat Joe Biden winning the state by nearly 80,000 votes.

From attorney to radical

Shaky video footage posted online provides a glimpse of the feverish days before Congress met to certify Biden’s win. Outside Cutler’s office on the penultimate day of 2020, flags swayed and flapped: The American flag. Trump on a tank. A flag with the anti-government Three Percenters logo. The South Korean Flag—a symbol brought by members of the “Rod of Iron” church in Newfoundland, Pa., a church founded by one of the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s sons, infamous for its members incorporating AR-15 rifles in worship services.

Everywhere the camera panned, people stood with signs that showed the spread of election fraud misinformation that has been debunked innumerable times. “Stop the Steal.” “Dead people can’t vote.” “It’s not over.” “Take back authority – appoint electors.”

The crowd was peppered with people who would attend the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Frank Scavo, a former elected director of a Lackawanna County school district, took the bullhorn and worked the crowd into a frenzy. “Let’s have arrests,” Scavo said. “Let’s have prosecution. And let’s make examples, that stealing elections is much worse than almost anything you can do.”

Scavo noted that many people had gathered outside Cutler’s office because rightwing media mogul and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon told them to do so earlier that day on his online talk show. Scavo would spend two months in prison for entering the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

The video itself was shot by Charles Bausman, a far-right propagandist living in Lancaster at the time, who ran an anti-semitic, pro-Russia website and once hosted a white nationalist gathering on his property. Recordings later captured Bausman among the mob inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Soon after, he turned up in Moscow on a television network owned by one of Vladimir Putin’s oligarchs.

And then there was LoBue. He carried a U.S. flag and stood near a woman of similar age wearing a gray jacket.

By the time he ended up outside Cutler’s office, he already had a long and by all appearances successful career behind him. LoBue was an active attorney in Delaware from 1980 to 2014, according to Sean O’Sullivan, spokesman for Delaware Courts.

LoBue served as a deputy attorney general from December 1979 through August 1981, according to former Delaware Attorney General Charles Oberly, who said he didn’t remember him personally.

Court records show some of LoBue’s private practice cases, representing workers in personal injury claims against large companies like Chrysler, General Motors and Johnson Controls.

As LoBue and the rest of the protesters relocated outside Speaker Cutler’s residence, their message to Cutler converged upon one word: Decertify. Video footage shows them chanting it ceaselessly for at least seven minutes. Cutler later testified before the select committee investigating Jan. 6 and noted that in addition to the protests, he received “daily” calls from Trump attorneys—and two from Trump—pressuring him to reject the electors. Cutler refused, at one point telling Trump the Legislature didn’t have the power to overturn the chosen electors.

Trump supporters shouting “decertify” outside the home of Pennsylvania Speaker of the House Bryan Cutler. ⁦@LancasterOnline⁩ pic.twitter.com/9pjInoR9xj

— Blaine Shahan (@BlaineShahanLNP) December 30, 2020

Assault on a federal officer

One week later, at the northwest corner of the U.S. Capitol grounds, the chant was even more concise. “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”

A police officer desperately tried to hold together a railing that served as a barricade as rioters pushed it down. Video footage shows that LoBue stood at the front of it next to his traveling companion, #KidRailing—a man who looked to be in his 30s, unshaven with medium length hair, wearing a red MAGA hat like LoBue. The younger man got his nickname from a video that captured him picking up a metal railing and throwing it at police.

Video shows the first rioters toppled over the barricade and fought with two police officers. Also among the rioters was Ryan Samsel, a Bucks County man who later was charged with assaulting a Capitol Police officer, knocking her unconscious. Video shows Samsel, LoBue and #KidRailing all as part of the same violent push forward that knocked over the officer.

Behind them approached dozens more people, including members of the Proud Boys militia, who made use of the route the vanguard group of rioters cleared for them. Also following this route was Samuel Lazar of Ephrata, who was charged with pepper-spraying officers during the riot. Lazar, also known as #FacepaintBlowhard, was first identified by LNP | LancasterOnline in April 2021 and was arrested three months later.

The Breach of the Capitol by the Minute

12:53 – Riot begins as Ryan Samsel and James Grant push aside barricades to approach the police guarding the NW path from the Peace Circle to the Capitol (Trump is still speaking at this point)pic.twitter.com/iOW8BTocpm

— Stephen Horn (@stephenehorn) January 6, 2023

A second video, shot just minutes later, showed that the mob advanced to the base of the stairs outside the Capitol, where once again police attempted to hold the line. One rioter carried a black, white-and blue flag that read “Police Lives Matter.” Another shouted obscenities at police and called them “pigs.”

LoBue and his companion stood at the barricade next to the flag, where police attempted to get the crowd to turn back.

LoBue, holding a blue Trump flag, joined in the rhythmic chant: “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”

An unprecedented investigation

The FBI has arrested more than 1,000 people so far—but it is still seeking to identify about 320 people “believed to have committed violent acts on Capitol grounds,” according to the Department of Justice’s most recent update. The FBI also has 14 videos containing footage of “suspects wanted for violent assaults on federal officers” as well as a video of two suspects wanted for assaulting members of the media.

Stanford Law School professor and former federal prosecutor David Sklansky said he’s not surprised that these people have not been identified by law enforcement yet.

“This investigation is really unprecedented in its scope and in its nature,” Sklansky said. “We’ve never had such a sprawling federal investigation looking into so many potential defendants, and we’ve never had a complex federal investigation like this responding to an attempted insurrection.”

Even after someone is identified, investigators face a series of hurdles required to make a case, Sklansky said. They have to prove that the person depicted in the video is the person they think it is. They have to show that the person committed a crime. “And I think in this investigation in particular, because it’s so politically charged, the government is probably trying to be especially careful that they are applying consistent internal rules about who should be charged and what they should be charged with because the government wants to be consistent and fair.”

Sklansky said the government’s success in securing convictions against leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys for the charge of seditious conspiracy shows its approach has been working.

Political pressures mean prosecutors are stuck balancing two different concepts, with real risks at stake. On one hand, they need to show people they’re being fair. On the other hand, they need to show people that accusations of being “political” won’t have an effect on what they do.

“And I don’t think the government can be in the position of giving someone a pass just because there are politicians who will make hay of the prosecution and who will claim, erroneously, that there is something untoward about it,” Sklansky said. “To turn your back on an attempted violent overturning of a presidential election would be a dereliction of the mission of the Department of Justice, so I don’t think they can do that.”

At the FBI field office in Philadelphia, Adamowski encouraged people to remain patient while agents and analysts review nearly four million files, including police body-cameras, surveillance camera footage and digital devices obtained through search warrants. That amounts to more than nine terabytes of information and would take nearly a year for one person to view continuously.

Adamowski said federal agents remain committed to prosecuting those responsible for the Capitol attack.

“While it may appear that no overt law enforcement action is being taken on some tips that have been submitted, tipsters should rest assured that the FBI is working diligently behind the scenes to follow all investigative leads to verify tips from the public and bring these criminals to justice.”

This reporter’s work is funded by the Lancaster County Local Journalism Fund. For more information, or to make a contribution, please visit lanc.news/supportlocaljournalism.