An alleged photo of David Walker (left, circled in blue) and his brother Philip Walker (right, circled in yellow), according to a document detailing the allegations by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. (U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Columbia.)
A pair of brothers were criminally charged Thursday with assaulting a New York Times photographer and stealing her camera equipment as she sought to document the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Philip Walker, of Pennsylvania, and David Walker, of New Jersey, were among the rioters who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, federal authorities charged. Minutes after entering the building, they allegedly assaulted a photographer who had been standing at the top of the east Rotunda stairs and fled with the photographer’s equipment.
Although court documents don’t name the photographer, the New York Times confirmed that the victim was staff photographer Erin Schaff, who wrote in a story for the Times that her attackers threw her to the floor after grabbing her press pass and seeing the name of her employer.
“I started screaming for help as loudly as I could,” Schaff wrote. “No one came. People just watched. At this point, I thought I could be killed and no one would stop them.”
It was not immediately clear whether Philip, 52, or David Walker, 49, had an attorney, and other attempts to reach them Thursday were unsuccessful. The Office of the Federal Public Defender for the District of Columbia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The brothers are both charged with the felonies of federal robbery, assault with the intent to commit a felony and destruction of property, as well as seven misdemeanors including assault, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, and engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds, the Justice Department said in a statement.
“We are grateful to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the FBI for their persistence in pursuing justice in this case,” New York Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha said in a statement to The Washington Post. “Independent, fact-based journalism is a cornerstone of democracy and attacks against reporters should be a grave concern to anyone who cares about an informed citizenry.”
On. Jan. 6, 2021, the Walkers allegedly joined the mob spurred by President Donald Trump that surrounded the Capitol, clashed with U.S. Capitol Police and ultimately forced their way inside the halls of Congress.
Schaff was watching as a crowd of hundreds pushed past the one officer guarding the ceremonial doors to the Capitol Rotunda, she wrote. She was quickly surrounded.
“Two or three” men dressed in black demanded to know who she worked for before they grabbed her press pass. Schaff’s attackers ripped one of her cameras away from her and broke the lens of another one before fleeing, she wrote.
“After that I was hyperventilating, unsure of what to do,” Schaff wrote. “I knew I needed to get away from the mob and hide my broken camera so I wouldn’t be targeted again.”
Investigators allege that Schaff briefly pursued the Walkers to get her camera back and that David Walker pushed her. Surveillance video showed the Walkers exiting the Capitol shortly afterward, with Philip Walker carrying a large object under his jacket, according to charging documents.
Schaff hid her remaining camera and continued to film the mob roaming the Capitol with her phone, “which was all I had left,” she wrote. Missing her press credentials, she was briefly held at gunpoint by Capitol Police when authorities began to clear the building.
In an interview with an FBI agent, Philip Walker later admitted to participating in the riot and fighting an individual in the Capitol, according to charging documents. He told the agent that he believed the person was a member of “antifa” — a loosely knit group of far-left activists — and that he later disposed of the camera he had taken in a body of water, according to investigators.
Nearly 20 journalists were assaulted, and news equipment worth tens of thousands of dollars was destroyed, during the Jan. 6 riot, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. John Minchillo, a photographer for the Associated Press, was grabbed by his backpack, dragged down a flight of stairs and thrown over a ledge. Four protesters have been charged in the assault on Minchillo; one was sentenced to 34 months in prison.
Trump, now the Republican presidential nominee, has escalated his overtures to Jan. 6 defendants at recent rallies. During a presidential debate Tuesday with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, he twice declined to say whether he had any regrets about the riot.
The attack on the Capitol resulted in the deaths of five people, including Ashli Babbitt, a pro-Trump rioter who was killed while attempting to enter the House chamber, and U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian D. Sicknick, who engaged with rioters and died the next day after suffering two strokes.
