On Aug 18, 2021 myBurbank reported that “33-year-old actor, Michael Aaron Carico, was arrested in Burbank, Ca. on Aug. 11th following an FBI criminal complaint, charging him with entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, and disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building”. He was reportedly among the first wave of Jan. 6, 2021, attackers on the DC Capitol Bldg.
Carico remains the only Burbank resident out of the 1,265 individuals charged to date since Jan. 6, 2021. Department prosecutors have secured more than 718 guilty pleas — including 213 who pleaded to felonies that include assaults on federal officers, obstructing law enforcement and seditious conspiracy. The total number of Jan 6 rioters is said to exceed 3,000, with many more arrests pending.
In our continuing efforts to publish the outcomes of serious crimes, myBurbank is reporting the result of Mr. Carico’s March 11, 2022, guilty plea for what Federal prosecutors say was his part in “the biggest probe in US history, both in terms of the number of defendants and the sheer quantity of evidence.” FBI Director Christopher Wray told a Congressional hearing panel that the DC Capitol attack amounted to “domestic terrorism.”
Carico had been an aspiring local actor/male model, who had appeared in films, TV, and modeling ads. He committed, however, the same mistake hundreds of other Jan 6 rioters made in recording themselves while bragging as part of the insurrectionist mob and committing crimes at the time. Carico even posted himself from the DC Capitol Bldg. shouting out, “Hey Nancy, go f**k yourself!” and as a result was sentenced to two years of probation, six months home detention, and $1400 in fines and restitution.
More than half the arrests like Carico’s made by authorities were the result of a loose band of “online sleuths” who found the rioters’ posts on the Internet and turned over their evidence to the FBI. Carico and his insurrection co-defendants have had a rippling effect across America, all the way to Burbank, where local self-described MAGA sympathizers who claimed they were inspired by the recent Jan 6, 2021 DC insurrectionists, protested for five consecutive Saturday afternoons outside the Tinhorn Flats Saloon on W. Magnolia Ave.
They threatened violence if their favorite drinking establishment continued to be closed like all other Burbank businesses were at the time due to COVID restrictions. The son of the Tinhorn’s owner, Lucas Lepejian, defied Burbank police when they boarded up his saloon and he attempted to reopen it, resulting in his arrest three separate times for trespassing, saying at the time that, just like the Jan 6 insurrectionists, he had a “Constitutional right” to do so and would later be exonerated in court, filed a counter lawsuit against the City of Burbank. Like Carico, however, Lucas Lepejian ended up meekly pleading guilty to all the charges against him in a Burbank courtroom and accepted probation, fines, and community service.
Carico appears to have paid a steep social and professional price for his Jan. 6 attack on America’s Constitution and 2020 election results, as seen in his seemingly regretful after-sentencing statement.
Carico, whose IMDB profile includes credits for two movies in 2021, said that he had lost friends and jobs as a result of his decision to join the pro-Trump mob that day.
“I have received death threats through voice mail, lost most of my friends in the realm of film, lost my agent, manager, lost my career and am on the verge of having to do something different altogether because of how many news articles there are on my name,” he said in the letter. “For an actor his name is everything. My name is shattered and I only have myself to blame.”
