Thomas Sibick, charged in the attack on a police officer amid the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol, has asked permission from a federal judge to be allowed to work on two property renovation projects during the day.

"This work may, or may not, be remunerated, but it will allow Mr. Sibick to participate in a worthwhile and mentally-healthy activity rather than stay at home all day," said his lawyer, Stephen F. Brennwald, in a filing in a Washington, D.C. federal court.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Cara A. Gardner and Tara Ravindra urged the judge to reject the request.

"The government remains concerned about the safety of the community," according to their court filing, adding that Sibick "has demonstrated a willingness to use violence to impede and obstruct the right and lawful function of government."

Since his pre-trial release from a Washington jail in October, Sibick has had to remain at his parents' home under the watch of his father, Eugene M. Sibick, on "24-hours-a-day lock-down" except for court appearances, medical appointments and religious services with his parents once a week, according to a federal judge's order. He is permitted to be on the home's porch, patio, yard and driveway.

Sibick would like to accompany and assist a person who is renovating two separate properties, and the expected work hours would be from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. So he has asked to be released on a curfew on those days between 9:30 and 5 p.m. The person would be with Sibick at all times throughout the work days, Brennwald said in court papers.

Sibick also asked the court to direct the U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services office in the Western District of New York to let him attend job interviews and, if hired, to engage in full-time employment.

"He is merely asking for permission to occupy his time by being productive, rather than by sitting around his parents’ home all day," Brennwald said.

Sibick can access internet capable devices, but the judge in October told him not to use social media – including Parler, Gab, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Discord, Twitter, SnapChat and TikTok – and not to watch any political news programs.

Since his release from custody on Oct. 26, Sibick’s compliance has been "exemplary," Brennwald said.

But the government opposes what it called a step-down from home incarceration to a curfew.

"The government does not oppose the defendant’s request to be able to attend employment interviews upon showing satisfactory proof of an employment interview to his supervising pre-trial services agent, as long as he otherwise remains on home incarceration," Gardner and Ravindra said in their filing.

The federal prosecutors said the pre-trial services agency, which investigates and supervises persons charged with or convicted of federal crimes, opposes Sibick's request for a curfew to renovate properties.

"The government appreciates that the defendant has thus far been compliant with his conditions of release," according to the prosecutors. "However, the defendant’s compliance is expected.

"There has been no change in the defendant’s circumstances that decreases the danger he presents to the community," according to the prosecutors.

Sibick, 36, has been charged with intentionally assaulting and robbing on Jan. 6 then-D.C. Police Officer Michael Fanone, who was dragged down Capitol steps into a mob of rioters, then shocked with a stun gun, beaten with flagpoles and stripped of his gear, according to prosecutors. Sibick has admitted to taking Fanone's badge and radio, burying the badge in his backyard and then lying about it, according to earlier court filings.

But Brennwald has contended that the contact between Sibick and the officer was very brief, and that because of the press of bodies and the movement of the officer’s body, Sibick could not have grabbed them intentionally, but did so accidentally as he was reaching toward the officer to pull him to safety. Prosecutors have scoffed at that assertion. 

Sibick was indicted on 10 counts: obstruction of an official proceeding and aiding and abetting; civil disorder; assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers; robbery; entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; impeding ingress and egress in a restricted building or grounds; engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds; impeding passage through the Capitol grounds or buildings; and act of physical violence in the Capitol grounds or buildings.

In a separate filing, Brennwald said Sibick intends to file a motion to dismiss the indictment.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson has not ruled on Sibick's request to modify his home-confinement rules yet.

During the October hearing, when she released Sibick from custody, the judge said she found his criminal history "more troubling now than I did before, now that I have more detail about what underlie each of the issues."

Sibick’s criminal history includes six prior arrests, at least five of which resulted in a conviction, according to prosecutors. His prior arrests include one for second-degree aggravated harassment in New York in 2010 and a conviction for failure to stop or respond for a police command in Utah in 2015. The Utah arrest included a charge, later dismissed, for carrying a concealed loaded firearm.

"It's true that the previous offenses were largely misdemeanors, but the record is not insignificant," Jackson said at the hearing. " There is a lot of conduct that the best that you could say about it is that it's irresponsible, and you could say worse things about it because it either frightened or truly endangered other people."

Brennwald did not address the prosecutors' concerns "about the safety of the community" in his reply to their court filing.

But he addressed Sibick's criminal history during the October hearing when he successfully argued for Sibick's pre-trial release.

"What I realized after talking to his parents quite a bit and looking at the record is Mr. Sibick was one person before 2016, in that area, and a different person after that," Brennwald said. "Now, I realize that there is this Jan. 6th incident that came in the middle just recently, but literally things changed for him after he came back from Utah."

"He came back, and then he started school when he came back in 2016 and he got his MBA by 2019. So he was actually a changed person in the sense that he decided that he had to settle down, buckle down, and go to school and get a degree, and he did. And so there were no criminal convictions from 2016, '17, '18, '19, '20 at all; no incidents.

"That's a huge change in his life. His parents saw a big change," Brennwald said. "He got his own place. He had a girlfriend. He got stable. And he got a job as a nursing home assistant administrator. He literally was on track to finally grow up. It took him a while, but he finally grew up."

Brennwald at the October hearing cited Sibick's mental health diagnosis in seeking his release from custody.

"He's not the same person who was there on Jan. 6th, deluded by claims of stolen elections and doing whatever, you know, angry, shouting and in a manic phase," he said. "I mean, he's just not that person anymore. And so the question is, does that make him less dangerous?

"So people have a hard time accepting medication's changes on a person's mind, but he's definitely a different person."