A New Jersey man who wore a throwback Philadelphia Eagles beanie to the Jan. 6 riot was arrested by the FBI this week after online "sedition hunters" identified him with the help of facial recognition and Facebook photos from a 2020 family trip to the pumpkin patch.
Lee Giobbie, a 40-year-old financial adviser from Eastampton, New Jersey, was arrested on Tuesday and charged with several federal crimes, including felony charges of civil disorder and obstruction of an official proceeding. Giobbie, federal authorities alleged, yelled "move the gates!" over a bullhorn before the barricades on the east side of the Capitol were breached. He was later recorded at the front of the mob yelling "push, push, push, push!” as they broke through another police line and then helped breach the Capitol building, pushing through the east doors leading into the rotunda, authorities said.
"We need something to break the door down!" Giobbie said, according to the FBI, which said that open-source video also shows Giobbie pushing against a police shield during the chaos.
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Giobbie, authorities said, was "one of the first rioters to enter" and "aggressively pushed his way through the Rotunda Door as police were actively trying to defend it." Inside the Capitol, Giobbie was briefly detained by an officer, and ultimately left the Capitol through a door on the west side of the building, according to the FBI and open-source evidence gathered by online sleuths. Giobbie did not immediately respond to a message left for him at his workplace.
Online sleuths identified Giobbie in 2022 and reported him to the FBI that year, and then reported additional information on Giobbie in 2023. They turned up a 2020 family photo from a trip to a pumpkin patch, posted a few months before Jan. 6, in which Giobbie was wearing the same Philadelphia Eagles beanie that the FBI said he wore on Jan. 6.
An FBI affidavit, citing help from confidential human sources, also featured an image that compared a small mole or freckle on Giobbie's right cheek that appeared in both Giobbie's professional work portrait and high-quality images of Giobbie taken on Jan. 6. Small facial markings can help confirm matches produced by facial recognition, a tool which has proven very useful to the online sleuths who have aided the FBI in cases against hundreds of Capitol rioters and who have identified hundreds of additional rioters like Giobbie.
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