Madison, Wisconsin.. A wisconsin man is accused of Trying to burn down a congressman’s office Earlier this year, because he was upset by the federal TikTok ban, he pleaded no contest to felony arson.
Kayden Stachowicz, 20, of Menasha, filed the plea Monday in Fond du Lac County Circuit Court, online court records show. The defendants who have pleaded no contest have decided that they will no longer fight the charges but are not pleading guilty.
District Attorney Eric Toney agreed to drop the burglary and property damage charges in exchange for the guilty plea. Stachowicz faces up to 40 years in prison in the state prison system when he is sentenced on March 5. Emails and voicemails were left for his attorney, listed in online records as Timothy Edward Hogan.
According to a criminal complaint, a police officer responded to a fire outside Republican U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman’s office in Fond du Lac around 1 a.m. on Jan. 19 and saw Stachowicz standing nearby.
Stachowicz told the officer he started the fire because he didn’t like Grothman, according to the complaint. He said he initially planned to break into the office and set fire to the interior but was unable to break the window. He then poured gas over an electrical box in the back of the building and around the front of the building, lit a match and watched it burn, according to the complaint.
He said he wanted to burn down the office because the US government shut down TikTok in violation of his constitutional rights and peace was no longer an option. He noted that Grothman voted for the closure but did not want to hurt anyone or Grothman himself.
Grothman voted for a bill in April 2024 that would require TikTok’s China-based subsidiary, ByteDance, to sell its U.S. operations. The deadline was January 19, but President Donald Trump issued several executive orders to extend it. It was his administration Negotiating with Chinese officials to keep the popular social media app running in the US, but no deal has been announced.
Messages were left at Grothman’s office in Washington, D.C., and with a spokeswoman.