US Capitol riot fugitive seeks asylum in Canada

OTTAWA, ONTARIO, CANADA —

An American who escaped after being sentenced to prison for his role in a riot at the US Capitol is now seeking political asylum in Canada as he waits and hopes for a pardon when Donald Trump returns to the White House.

Antony Vo, 32, was sentenced to nine months behind bars and ordered to report to federal prison on June 14, 2024, but fled to Canada instead.

More than 1,500 people have been charged in connection with the January 6, 2021 attack on Congress, which sought to obstruct the certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory.

Vo, of Indiana, was convicted in a Washington jury trial on four counts of trespassing and misconduct related to his actions.

“I knew Canada had a history of welcoming refugees, from those fleeing conscription in Vietnam to the people who harbored Edward Snowden in Hong Kong,” he told AFP. “So I packed up my snowboarding gear and drove across the border.”

In the refugee claim documents, Vo said the riots were a “peaceful protest” that was “undermined as part of a domestic regime change operation to politically kill Trump and his supporters.”

He added that he had been “persecuted, harassed” and subjected to an “unfair trial” because of his political beliefs, and if sent back to the United States he would be imprisoned “under inhumane conditions.”

The attack on the Capitol followed a fiery speech by then-President Trump to tens of thousands of supporters near the White House, in which he repeated his false claims that he had won the 2020 election.

More than 140 police officers were injured during the hours-long standoff with rioters brandishing flagpoles, baseball bats, hockey sticks and other improvised weapons, along with tasers and canisters of bear spray.

Vo claimed he saw no violence.

Pictures on social media showed Vo and his mother Annie — who fled Vietnam in 1991 and was granted asylum in the United States — smiling inside the Capitol that day. She was arrested in March and is awaiting trial.

Vo said he hopes to remain in Canada “until the situation is safe for me to return” to the United States. “When Donald Trump takes office, I hope he pardons me and the other protesters on January 6.”

Trump called the rioters patriots and political prisoners, and told a CNN town hall that he was “inclined to pardon many of them.”

Several defendants in the Capitol riots took advantage of Trump’s election victory over Vice President Kamala Harris to request that their trials or sentencing be delayed.

Trump himself, who takes office again in January, has been accused of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

But the case never went to trial and has now been dropped because of the Justice Department’s policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.

Vo said he also tried to claim asylum in Argentina, Mexico, El Salvador, Vietnam, Belarus and Russia.

“I seriously considered getting paramotoring lessons and then paramotoring from Key West to Cuba to seek asylum there as well,” he said in his claim.

Vo said that in Canada, “people took really good care of me.”