Elections

Man arrested in connection with burglary of Trump campaign office

The Trump campaignโ€™s office in Ashburn, Virginia, was broken into in on Aug. 11.

Campaign signs for Donald Trump
Josh Ritchie/Bloomberg via Getty Images

A man suspected of burglarizing a Trump campaign office in Virginia was arrested in California over the weekend, authorities said.

Security video captured images of the suspect in August. The Loudoun County, Virginia, Sheriffโ€™s Office said Thursday that the man in the video โ€” Toby Shane Kessler, 39 โ€” was detained in California on Saturday for squatting in an unoccupied campus dorm at the University of California, San Francisco. He will face burglary charges in Virginia.

The Trump campaignโ€™s office in Ashburn was broken into on Aug. 11. The facility also houses the headquarters for the Virginia 10th District Republican Committee.

Kessler forced "entry through the back door of the Ashburn office" and spent "a brief period inside before leaving," the sheriff's office said.

Kessler is in a county jail in San Francisco, according to the city's sheriff's office website. He faces 19 charges, including trespassing, vandalism and theft, which could relate to multiple cases.

"Following the August burglary here we were concerned he may have left the DC area and coordinated with other agencies to assist in locating him as is standard practice," the sheriff's spokesperson Thomas Julia told NBC News in a statement.

When Kessler was arrested in California, "his name came up as the person identified in the Loudoun burglary," Julia said.

The sheriff's office described Kessler as not having a fixed address.

University of California, San Francisco, police referred questions about the arrest to the university's public affairs team, which did not immediately respond to further questions about the arrest.

Neither the Trump transition team nor the Virginia 10th District Republican Committee immediately responded to requests for comment about the arrest.

The Loudoun County Sheriff's Office had identified Kessler and issued a warrant for his arrest in August, just days after the burglary. At the time, the office said in a news release that he "appears to have left nothing behind, and it is still unclear what, if anything, he took with him."

Lawyers for Kessler could not immediately be reached for comment. The police departments involved have not identified them. 

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