More than a year after the infamous Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol Riot, the former top recruiter for Kentucky State Police (KSP) is suing the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet for defamation related to his visit to Washington D.C. that day.

Captain Michael Webb filed a lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court against the cabinet, KSP and members of the state’s executive branch for what he claims was an unfair public representation of his conduct in Washington.

An internal KSP investigation from last February cleared Webb of any wrongdoing. He says that KSP administration wrote in press releases that he was “at the rally,” but did not enter the U.S. Capitol Building. Webb’s attorney, the Shelbyville-based C. Gilmore Dutton, told the Herald-Leader the phrasing implicated that Webb was part of the walk toward the Capitol leading up to the riot.

Webb claims in the lawsuit he repeatedly told superiors that he was only “site-seeing” in the nation’s capital the morning of the riot.

This characterization of his actions, according to the lawsuit, has caused Webb “post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety,” a nervous breakdown and placement on medical leave. Webb has been reassigned to a post in which most of his work is remote and he has little interaction with others, Dutton said.

The lawsuit says Webb and his wife left the Washington Monument at 12:40 p.m., shortly after former President Donald Trump’s encouragement to a crowd to “never concede,” promoting the false claim that Trump won the 2020 presidential election.

Crowds began to storm the outside barrier of the Capitol building, more than a mile east of the Washington Monument, around 1 p.m.

Webb and his wife reportedly began their day at the Washington Monument at 7:40 a.m. and left the National Mall area at 12:40 p.m. The lawsuit does not detail where the couple was or what they were doing in those five hours other than “site-seeing (sic).”

Around noon, Webb and his wife “saw what was going on” at Trump’s rally, but they did not pay attention to the speech, Dutton said.

“It’s sort of a tragedy for Captain Webb — an up and coming officer with the KSP who was singled out because he happened to be in Washington D.C. on the same day as the capitol riot,” Dutton said. “The politics of the current executive branch decided to make him an example.”

A social media post from Webb’s wife, Cara Beth Webb, suggests that politics may have been a factor in the family’s attendance.

According to the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting (KyCIR), who first broke the story of Webb’s reassignment, Cara Beth Webb posted a photo on Facebook of herself and her daughter at the rally in a red “Keep America Great” hat. The daughter is not mentioned in the lawsuit’s timeline of events until 1:25 p.m.

Cara Beth Webb included descriptions of the rally in her post, and called Ashli Babbit, a woman shot and killed by Capitol police while attempting to breach the Capitol, a “fellow american fighting for her cause.”

Cara Beth Webb also expressed disapproval with Babbit’s method of protest.

“I will add that I am sorry to hear of a woman passing, a fellow american fighting for her cause,” Cara Beth Webb wrote. “I don’t have to agree with the way she went about her protest to be saddened for her family.”

Dutton argued that the social media post, a source of concern among Webb’s superiors according to the lawsuit, was misinterpreted.

“I think an attempt at an interpretation of his wife’s social media post implicates him in some kind of nefarious activity that’s absolutely untrue and without any merit or fact,” Dutton said.

In a text with a superior on Jan. 6, quoted in the lawsuit, Webb said that the trip was “a last-minute thing my wife wanted to do,” and that he couldn’t let her go alone.

The lawsuit states that on Feb. 5, the same day Webb’s temporary reassignment was reported by KyCIR, he was permanently reassigned to a “sedentary position at the Investigations Branch.”

Communications staff for the executive branch and KSP did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Webb’s lawsuit.