Ohio man accused of plan to attack US Capitol

Associated Press

CINCINNATI

A man who plotted to attack the U.S. Capitol and kill government officials inside it and spoke of his desire to support the Islamic State militant group was arrested Wednesday, the FBI said.

A criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Ohio charges Christopher Lee Cornell with attempting to kill officers and employees of the United States. Just a day earlier, authorities revealed another Ohio man had been charged with threatening to kill House Speaker John Boehner.

Cornell, also known as Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah, was arrested as he took control of a firearm during an undercover FBI operation in southwestern Ohio, the FBI said. The public never was in danger in the investigation, said John Barrios, acting special agent in charge of the FBI’s Cincinnati division.

A phone message and an email were left Wednesday for attorney Karen Savir, a federal public defender listed in court records as Cornell’s attorney. A working phone number could not be found for Cornell’s family members.

The complaint alleges that an FBI informant began supplying agents with information about Cornell last year. The informant and Cornell, who’s 20 and lives in Green Township, first began communicating through Twitter in August and then through an instant messaging platform separate from Twitter, according to the complaint.

“I believe we should meet up and make our own group in alliance with the Islamic State here and plan operations ourselves,” Cornell wrote in an instant message, according to the court document.