Ex-Brick Woman Who Sued Ocean Co. Over 2020, 2021 Election Records Charged In Jan. 6 Riots

WASHINGTON, DC — A former Brick Township woman who sued Ocean County over its election records for the 2020 and 2021 elections has been arrested and charged in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.

Anna Lichnowski was arrested July 27 in Florida, according to court records. She has been charged with entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, according to complaint and arrest warrant filed by federal authorities.

The riots disrupted the joint session of the U.S. Congress convened to count the electoral votes and certify the election of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Federal authorities received a tip about Lichnowski's participation in the riots on Jan. 15, 2021, according to the complaint, and a second tip on Aug. 10, 2021, where the tipster told authorities she had posted photos of herself inside the Capitol on social media but later deleted them.

In January 2022 the tipster provided a screenshot of a photo Lichnowski had sent to a relative, showing herself wearing a red winter hat and a blue scarf with white stars inside the Capitol, along with a message saying, "And yes. I was with the group that f------

stormed the capital. And I’m proud of it," according to the complaint.

Screen grabs from surveillance footage captured during the insurrection show Lichnowski in that hat and scarf in the Capitol building. The complaint says she was tracked on closed-circuit surveillance footage, entering the building at 2:47 p.m. and wandering around various areas inside before leaving at 3:21 p.m.

The federal agent investigating the tip confirmed the photos from the surveillance footage were Lichnowski with a Brick Township police officer who had known Lichnowski since they were children, according to the complaint.

Lichnowski had filed a lawsuit against Ocean County and the Ocean County Board of Elections in January 2022 over a request she filed under the Open Public Records Act seeking video surveillance of all of the county's vote-by-mail drop boxes.

The request was in the wake of the 2021 election, where Republican Mary Buckley finished fourth in the race for three seats on the Brick Township Council. Buckley had led when in-person votes were counted, but the completion of mail-in vote counting she finished behind Democrats Marianna Pontoriero and Heather deJong, who were second and third. Republican Perry Albanese was the top vote-getter in the November 2021 election.

Legal wrangling over Lichnowski's request, which initially was rejected by Ocean County, led to delays in records requests, including one for the video of the Brick Township dropbox. The video was overwritten in the interim, Ocean County officials said. Read more: Brick Ballot Drop Box Video Complaint Unfounded: County Official

In a YouTube video posted Jan. 18, 2022, Lichnowski said she is convinced fraud happened in the Brick election surrounding the mail-in ballots.

Her lawsuit was dismissed in July 2022 for a lack of prosecution, according to court records. Lichnowski moved to the Tampa area in July, according to her public Facebook posts. She continues to campaign against vote-by-mail balloting, which has been in place in Florida for years.

The violent siege on the Capitol was an attempt to stop the certification of electoral votes declaring Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election. It resulted in the deaths of five people during or soon after the attack, including two Capitol police officers and one rioter. About 140 police officers from the U.S. Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police Department were assaulted in the attack, according to the Justice Department.

It was the first time in U.S. history that the transfer of power from one administration to another was not peaceful. In a speech before rioters attacked the Capitol, Donald J. Trump repeated the same claims he had been making in the two months since the election that it had been stolen, then urged his supporters to walk from the rally site on the National Mall to the Capitol.

At least 25 people from New Jersey had been arrested and charged in connection with the insurrection as of the two-year anniversary in January. The FBI is still seeking leads on more than 1,400 people in connection with the riots. Read more: Where Jan. 6 Criminal Cases In NJ Stand On Insurrection's Anniversary