Experts: FBI has plenty of ways to find Jan. 6 riot suspect from North Lakeland
Jonathan Pollock arrived at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 dressed for concealment.
Pollock, a North Lakeland resident, wore camouflage attire from neck to ankles after traveling to Washington, D.C., to protest the certification of the 2020 presidential election. As the demonstration turned to rioting, Pollock joined the throng who fought through police officers and pushed their way toward the Capitol entrance, according to federal court records.
Related: Prosecution: Polk man was ready to die in January 6 U.S. Capitol attack
'It's a political move': Relatives defend Lakeland siblings accused in U.S. Capitol riot
Nearly seven months later, Pollock stands in contrast to most of the 630-plus suspects in the Jan. 6 insurrection. While the overwhelming majority indicted in the unrest — including his sister, Olivia Pollock — have been arrested, Jonathan Pollock remains a fugitive.
Pollock, 22, was grouped with his sister, a cousin and two friends when the U.S. Department of Justice filed indictments against them in late June on a range of charges, including assaults on law-enforcement officers. The other four have appeared in court and been released on bond.
When FBI agents arrived early on the morning of June 30 at the Pollock family’s property in the Kathleen area, they captured Olivia but didn’t find her brother. More than two months later, Jonathan Pollock — known to friends as “Johnny” — is the only Jan. 6 suspect from Central Florida still at large.
James Wedick, a retired FBI agent, said Pollock’s ability to elude arrest isn’t necessarily surprising and doesn’t mean the agency has made no progress in finding him.
“It does require paperwork; it does require court orders; it does require attending meetings,” said Wedick, who spent 35 years with the FBI. “It requires getting coordination. He’s listed in the national database now, and they’re getting those entries in — if you have bank accounts and credit cards. It’s minutiae that requires time to do, and two months is not unusual.”
The suspects: US Capitol riot photos show 4 North Lakeland residents arrested
Capitol Riot Roll Call: A running list of those who have been arrested
Wedick, who operates the website RetiredFBI.com, said the agency has the advantage of time.
“The problem (for a fugitive) is the FBI has got all day to look for you, and the only way you can really remain a fugitive — and today it’s even tougher — is for you to walk away from your family and whatever you owned,” Wedick said. “You can’t touch or pick it up again.”
Supporters of former President Donald Trump clashed with police at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, and some broke into the building, disrupting the work of Congress as it met to ratify Electoral College votes that confirmed the election of Joe Biden as president.
Pollock has been indicted on five charges, the most serious of which is assaulting, resisting or impeding law-enforcement officers. The maximum possible sentence on that charge is 20 years in prison, and the other four charges carry potential combined sentences of 10½ years.
An FBI arrest affidavit includes photos taken from police body cameras outside the Capitol on Jan. 6. Several show a bearded man, identified by the FBI as Pollock, fighting with officers who tried to protect the Capitol against a swarm of rioters. Another image allegedly depicts Pollock standing near the entrance to the Capitol, holding an American flag and raising one arm, as if urging other rioters toward the building.
Another Jan. 6 case: Judge postpones Lakeland resident Corinne Montoni's hearing in U.S. Capitol riot case
Though the affidavit doesn’t accuse Pollock of breaching the Capitol, as some rioters did, it quotes him as saying, “We didn’t come this far just to push back the cops.”
In court records, FBI agents said that Pollock moved in a group that included his sister, his cousin, Joshua Doolin of North Lakeland, and two friends: Joseph Hutchinson of North Lakeland and Michael Perkins of Plant City.
Two weeks after the riot, the FBI’s Washington Field Office opened a file on Unknown Subject (“UNSUB”) #144, later identified as Pollock.
Inspecting records
Wedick, who retired in 2004, said he tracked fugitives while working as an FBI special agent in California. He spent years working to capture Gilbert Chilton, convicted of embezzling millions from a teacher retirement system, and helped recover a former state senator convicted of bribery who fled to Costa Rica before sentencing.
Wedick said FBI agents searching for Pollock would get court orders to review financial records, which could reveal a travel history, and place stops on his credit cards. The agency would also develop a list of friends and associates with whom Pollock might have had recent contact.
“And so, it might have been hard 30 years ago, but today, with all of the social media and computer stuff, it becomes easier,” Wedick said. “That is, it becomes easier if you maintain contact with those folks because most people do maintain contact.”
Professor Kevin McMunigal, a former federal prosecutor and now a law professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, said investigators have several options for tracking possible contact between Pollock and associates, including family members.
McMunigal, a former Assistant United States Attorney in California, said one of the main surveillance tools is a dialed number recorder, also called a pen register, an electronic device that records all numbers called from a particular phone line. Agents could also use a “trap and trace” device, which identifies all incoming calls.
In other news: Lakeland lawyer says translator getting covert help to cross border out of Afghanistan
A third option, a tap of associates’ phone lines, would allow agents to listen to the content of phone calls. While all three require court approval, the standard of evidence for obtaining a wiretap is much higher, McMunigal said.
“They also might be able to get a grand jury subpoena to get phone records of past calls, either from him or from his sister or from associates, to try and figure out where he might be,” McMunigal said. “That’s a way to kind of historically do the same kind of stuff they would be doing with a pen register or trap and trace.”
Agents could also get permission to monitor Pollock’s computer activity or that of family members, McMunigal said.
The former prosecutor said the FBI has likely established some form of active surveillance on Pollock’s family members. Olivia Pollock’s release agreement requires her to wear a GPS ankle bracelet, making it easy for agents to track her movements.
COVID-19: Months later, Auburndale COVID-19 survivor faces lasting physical, emotional effects
If a family member transferred money through a company such as Western Union, agents would likely be able to request records without even needing a judge’s order, McMunigal said.
The fact that Pollock hasn’t yet been arrested suggests he has been careful and is not using any phones registered to him. While typical cell phones can be tracked through GPS signals and their proximity to transmission towers, Pollock could easily obtain a “burner” phone, a device that can be bought anonymously and used without an identifiable carrier account.
“That makes it harder, for sure,” McMunigal said.
Getting assistance?
Federal agents are no doubt looking for signs that someone is helping Pollock as he avoids arrest, both Wedick and McMunigal said.
While some of the Jan. 6 suspects have known ties to right-wing extremist groups, such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, no evidence has emerged to connect Pollock and his family to such organizations.
There is an entry dedicated to Pollock on Empty Wheel, a website operated by Marcy Wheeler, an independent journalist and a senior fellow at George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security. Wheeler cites a detention memo for Perkins, Pollock’s co-defendant, that “suggests Pollock’s group walked to the Capitol as part of a larger group that assembled at the Washington Monument, suggesting there may be some tie to the Proud Boys.”
Also: Why did this quiet Florida town produce 4 Capitol riot suspects? Locals share different opinions
More: Florida emerges as a cradle of the insurrection as Jan. 6 Capitol riot arrests keep piling up
But court documents don’t mention of any affiliation between either Pollock or Perkins and the Proud Boys, Wheeler wrote. In an update, she wrote that an online researcher told her the local contingent “did little more than nod at the Proud Boys.”
The group included Pollock’s father, Ben Pollock, Wheeler wrote, a detail that hasn’t been previously reported. The elder Pollock has not been charged with any crimes related to the Jan. 6 riot.
Wheeler wrote that “the arrest affidavit suggests the group left relatively few digital tracks for investigators (or had thoroughly scrubbed them by March 17, when the FBI conducted its first overt interview relating to Pollock). Of the five arrested, only Olivia gets mentioned as carrying a cell phone that placed her at the Capitol.”
The affidavit says Jonathan Pollock shared cell phone photos from the Capitol riot with co-workers but makes no mention of his social media activity, Wheeler noted. Prosecutors have relied heavily on social media posts to make indictments against many other Jan. 6 suspects, including Corinne Montoni, a South Lakeland woman arrested in March. She has no reported ties to Pollock’s group.
Anyone found to be assisting Pollock as he eludes arrest could be charged with a crime, McMunigal said. And Pollock could face an additional charge himself. McMunigal cited a federal statute that makes it a crime to cross state lines in order to avoid prosecution. That crime carries a maximum penalty of five years.
Could affect sentence
Pollock’s continuing effort to avoid arrest will also work against him if he is eventually caught, McMunigal said. For one thing, it probably eliminates any chance that he would be released before a trial.
Opinion: Guest column: Jan. 6 was just the beginning of the GOP's attempt to control elections
“When he gets arrested, there’s no way he’s going to be out,” McMunigal said. “So he’s going to be in jail the whole time his case is pending, and that would increase the pressure on him to plead guilty. It’s much harder to resist it if you’re in jail and deprived of interaction with your family and everything.”
The prosecution will also cite Pollock’s actions in seeking a maximum sentence, McMunigal said. Federal judges consider advisory sentencing guidelines that consider the crimes, how they were committed and the defendant’s background. (Pollock has no criminal record in Florida.)
Judges have discretion to move up or down on the range of potential sentences.
“To accept responsibility, traditionally that’s seen as the first step toward rehabilitation, is to say, ‘OK, I fess up and I did it,’ ” McMunigal said. “So it would not surprise me at all that this flight thing, the judge would be more inclined to go up. … So he’s going to face serious consequences for this. I would bet, compared to the other guys (from Lakeland), he would have a more serious sentence.”
There have been rare cases of suspects who avoid capture for years, such as Eric Rudolph, the Atlanta Centennial Park bomber. Rudolph hid in the mountains of North Carolina for five years before being captured.
But most fugitives give up or are caught much sooner. Wedick said FBI agents look for someone eluding arrest to make a mistake, such as contacting a relative.
“You’re your worst enemy,” he said. “You want be a fugitive, but you can’t keep your distance and so that’s what happens. It’s human psychology; that’s all it is. If you’re into chasing fugitives, you have to understand human psychology.”
The FBI is still seeking dozens of people whose images were captured during the Capitol riot and who have not yet been identified. But McMunigal said he didn’t think the heavy caseload would hamper efforts to find Pollock.
“In my experience, unlike state prosecutors, where resources are usually very strapped and there are very high caseloads, at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, we were working with the Secret Service and the FBI and stuff,” he said. “Anything we wanted, we got it.”
Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on Twitter @garywhite13.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: U.S. Capitol Riots: Experts say FBI has tools to find Jan. 6 suspect
