Over the weekend, investigators in California apprehended a man suspected of breaking into a Trump campaign headquarters in Virginia.
In August, the suspect appeared on security footage. The man in the video, Toby Shane Kessler, 39, was arrested in California on Saturday for squatting in an empty university residence at the University of California, San Francisco, according to the Loudoun County, Virginia, sheriff’s office on Thursday. In Virginia, he will be charged with burglary.
On August 11, the Trump campaign office in Ashburn was broken into. The Virginia 10th District Republican Committee’s headquarters are also located in the building.
According to the sheriff’s office, Kessler made “entry through the back door of the Ashburn office” and was there for “a brief period of time before leaving.”
According to the website of the San Francisco sheriff’s office, Kessler is currently incarcerated in a county jail. He is charged with 19 offenses, including theft, vandalism, and trespassing, some of which may be connected to other instances.
Thomas Julia, the sheriff’s spokesperson, said NBC News in a statement, “After the August burglary here, we were worried he might have left the DC area and worked with other agencies to assist in locating him as is standard practice.”
“His name came up as the person identified in the Loudoun burglary,” Julia added when Kessler was taken into custody in California.
Kessler did not have a fixed residence, according to the sheriff’s office.
Police at the University of California, San Francisco forwarded inquiries regarding the arrest to the university’s public affairs department, which did not immediately address any follow-up inquiries.
Requests for comment regarding the arrest were not immediately answered by the Virginia 10th District Republican Committee or the Trump transition team.
Days after the break-in, in August, the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office had identified Kessler and filed an arrest warrant. According to a news release issued by the office at the time, he “appears to have left nothing behind, and it is still unclear what, if anything, he took with him.”
Kessler’s attorneys were not immediately available for comment. They have not been named by the participating police forces.
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