January 6 marks the one-year anniversary of the U.S. Capitol riots where American Olympic swimmer Klete Keller was famously identified in multiple videos taken during the insurrection.
Keller’s involvement in the events that took place that day in Washington was puzzling for many who were close to him.
“That’s what has made this so confusing, so frustrating for so many people,” Gary Hall Jr., told the Los Angeles Times. “It seems so far outside of his character, his personality to get wrapped up in this.”
On Tuesday, the LA Times published an in-depth story that takes a closer look into the path that led Keller to be at the Capitol one year ago.
Keller, 39, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of obstructing an official proceeding before Congress in late September and agreed to cooperate with the government in the investigation.
His attorney, Edward B. MacMahon Jr., said that Keller “has admitted that he made a huge mistake by entering the Capitol” and “has accepted full responsibility for his actions that day and continues to work to rebuild his life and make amends for that error in judgment,” according to the Times.
The LA Times reveals that Keller struggled with finding an identity in his post-swimming career. He went from job to job, went through a divorce, and then found himself in a custody battle for his three children.
In 2010, two years after Keller’s swimming career wrapped up, having won his fifth Olympic medal in the men’s 4×200 freestyle relay at the 2008 Beijing Games, Keller’s wife, Sherrill, realized he had lied to her about having a job. When one of their kids had to go get stitches on Halloween, she found out they no longer had health insurance.
“I found out that Klete actually didn’t have a job,” she told the court during the child custody trial. “He had been lying to me and driving around” as if going to work.
She then testified that Klete attempted suicide about one month later, and suggested he get help numerous times.
In speaking to the LA Times, Sherrill also said that Keller spent a lot of their relationship resenting his parents and his upbringing, and eventually, that turned towards her.
She also recounts an incident shortly after they separated when Keller entered her home.
“He was standing behind me in my bathroom. It scared me fairly bad,” she testified, according to The Times. “I ended up talking him to the top of my stairway because he wouldn’t leave. … He pinned me up against my sons’ bedroom door and said, ‘Have you ever heard of marital rape?’ It caused something of a physical shoving match and then I threatened to call the police, so he left.”
After Sherrill sued Keller for child support, he was ordered to pay $191 a month and get a full-time job. He then spent 10 months living in his car, going on to tell the court he was “mentally and physically incapable of working” and struggled with depression.
Keller’s only employment was through swim clinics for some time, and then in 2017 he made an abrupt move to Colorado Springs where he got his retail license. When asked about the move he cited frustration with the custody situation.
The LA Times story discusses how Keller was never too heavily involved in politics, but in 2020, several friends noticed him posting on social media opposing public health protocols amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, and supporting then-President Donald Trump.
In mid-2020, Sherrill was awarded sole legal custody of their twins and temporary sole legal custody of their then-10-year-old daughter.
In November, he flew to Washington to attend the “Million MAGA March” that protested the presidential outcome.
“I think he felt like because he couldn’t be involved in his kids’ life on a daily basis that maybe he could have a positive impact for his kids by having a cause and really being faithful to that cause,” Holly Trinidad, managing broker at Keller’s employer, commercial real estate firm Hoff & Leigh, told the LA Times. “Probably the underlying psychology behind that was doing something to better the future for his kids, which really comes from a place of love.”
In December, police were called due to “custody issues” at Sherrill’s home in Davidson, N.C., as Keller had arrived for a scheduled visit and became angry when one of the twin boys resisted leaving.
“[Keller] angrily said numerous ugly, demeaning, and threatening things to [Sherrill] and her husband,” the filing said.
It alleged that Keller “continued his verbal attacks on [Sherrill] and her family throughout the weekend, and when [the twins] defended [Sherrill] and her family, [Keller] became enraged and told [the twins] that he might not come visit them anymore, and it was their fault.”
It was just over two weeks later that Keller flew to Washington, wearing a Team USA jacket, and took part in the insurrection of U.S. Capitol.
After he was indicted by the grand jury on seven counts, Sherrill filed a motion to reduce Keller’s visits with the twins.
According to Colorado real estate licensing records, Keller resumed working with Hoff & Leigh in May.
“He was completely remorseful,” Trinidad said of Keller in the days following the attack. “He was like, ‘I should have never gone. Had I known what this was going to turn out to be, I would never have gone and never have done this.’ … He’s genuinely a good-hearted person and you can’t have enough people in your life that are truly good-hearted people, regardless of how you feel about their politics.”
“He was struggling with identity and hard times,” Gary Hall Jr. added. “That’s what these radicals prey upon. He got swept up in it.”
As of late 2021, the twins are “completely resistant to any form of contact” with Keller in the aftermath of the Capitol attack, according to a motion filed by Sherrill’s attorney located by the LA Times.
Read the full story from the LA Times, courtesy of Nathan Fenno, here.
great
Tbh it sounds like he coulda used therapy, at probably a few points in the last decade… which is also really hard to get without health insurance… which he didn’t have cause he was out of a job…. We need to improve as a country.
I wonder how Klete would vote on a bill proposing easier access to mental health services for everyone?
I wonder how he would have voted 2 years ago, versus now?
In fact there is something wrong with the system if people can just drive up the stock market while others face a lot of inflation but I didn’t think that Trump was the solution for all this or Biden.
He forget that politicians can’t fixed every thing. Yup, 30 miles from Louisville Ford is building 2 auto plants but rural Appalachia is more isolated and coal has been in declined for years as an energy source at least in the US.
His wife is a key of this story. At some point she did not need him as a husband and father of their children.
That point was probably when she was pregnant with twins and sitting in the emergency room alone with her 10 month old who needed emergency care and being told there was no health insurance because her “husband” secretly had no job.
There is a more extensive article in the San Francisco Chronicle
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Inside-Klete-Keller-s-fall-from-Olympic-gold-to-16750528.php?IPID=SFGate-HP-Editors-Picks
It’s just a reprint of the LA Times article.
got it
The participation in January 6th riot is abhorrent & indefensible, full stop.
But after a read & re-reads of the LA Times article it strikes me hard how awful his divorce was. His ex- has her agency & prerogative to battle it out. She certainly has some substantive grievances & understandable resentments toward Klete.
That as given, I am disgusted by the scorched earth tactics deployed against him in his divorce, the public attacks on his dignity & dehumanization of him over the course of years. It clearly just mangled him beyond repair. No doubt it also contributed to him cascading into the sewer main with the rest of the January 6th rioters. That disgusts me straight to the ground.… Read more »
I don’t even understand most of this post.
Joel either has plastic cup comments or really insightful ones, not much in between.
This feels somewhere in the middle. I concur, ^
This is Klete’s own words in court, “It was very overwhelming to have three kids in diapers and also needing to support them,” Keller testified, “and that kind of led to some confusion on my part. I was lost.”
In another court proceeding, Judge Christy T. Mann ordered him to pay $191 a month and get a full-time job. The judge wrote: “Defendant’s underemployment is voluntary and is a result of Defendant’s naive indifference to his children’s immediate financial needs.”
He lost his parental rights because of his own actions not because of his ex or her attorney.
I think his ex really put the screws to him in a bad way. Not saying this excuses his behavior. Just saying that as having gone through a divorce against a totally irrational ex that I can see how she set him off. Trying to go to court and represent himself against her lawyer is just sad and an example of how the rich control the system in an unfair way.
Secondly I found most of this Jan 6 crap to be politically motivated. My opinion is that Klete Keller walking through the capital is pretty harmless. Can you see him knocking on Pelosi’s office door and telling her I am here to overthrow the govt and put Donald Trump… Read more »
Ridiculous.
Ah yes, it’s her fault he attempted to rape her because she was annoying. Are you serious?!
Do you understand how divorce attorneys work? That newspaper article was pulling stuff from his divorce court filings and treating it like the gospel truth which is far from what is was. It was slander drafted by crooked attorneys trying to make him look like the devil. I guarantee it.