Twenty-year-old Caiden Stachowicz of Menasha is headed to prison for seven years after admitting he set a fire outside U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman’s Fond du Lac district office, a political protest that turned into a felony arson case.
The early-morning blaze on Jan. 19, 2025, scorched the exterior of the strip-mall office but did not injure anyone. Prosecutors say Stachowicz was angry over Grothman’s vote in favor of legislation tied to forcing a federal sale of TikTok and targeted the office because of that stance.
Fond du Lac County Circuit Judge Tricia Walker handed down the sentence Thursday, ordering seven years of initial confinement and seven years of extended supervision, along with more than $17,000 in restitution and a no-contact order with Grothman, according to court records. Stachowicz had pleaded no contest in November, and prosecutors agreed to dismiss separate burglary and property-damage counts as part of the deal. The plea and sentence were reported by AP News.
Details of the crime, laid out in a criminal complaint filed in January and included in court records, describe a calculated trip that started at a Menasha Kwik Trip, where Stachowicz told officers he bought gasoline and matches. He said he tried to break a window at Grothman’s office but failed, then poured gas on an electrical box and along the side of the building before striking a match.
According to the complaint, he told investigators he chose the office because Grothman voted "yes" on the TikTok sale and declared that "peace isn't an option anymore," adding that he "wished the whole building would have burned down." Those statements are documented in the criminal complaint.
Police and firefighters were called to the Peters Avenue office, just north of Scott Street, around 1 a.m. Officials say they found Stachowicz nearby and quickly knocked down the flames before they could spread inside. Grothman later told reporters he was baffled that the suspect had not tried a more conventional route to air his grievance first.
"I think it's unusual he never called us first. His first way to send a message to his congressman was to light the building on fire," Grothman said, according to FOX6 Milwaukee.
Grothman had voted in April 2024 for a bill that would have required ByteDance, TikTok’s China-based owner, to sell its U.S. operations by a Jan. 19, 2025, deadline, a date that lined up with the timing of the fire and Stachowicz’s stated motive. TikTok later negotiated a deal to spin off an American-run version of the platform, keeping the app at the center of a national political and cultural fight. That broader policy backdrop was outlined by AP News.
Legal Details And Next Steps
Before entering his no-contest plea, Stachowicz initially pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, prompting the court to order a psychiatric evaluation, according to prosecutors. The original complaint charged him with arson, making terrorist threats, attempted burglary and criminal damage. Under the plea agreement, several counts were resolved, but the no-contest plea is treated as an admission for sentencing purposes, according to court filings and subsequent reporting.
Those filings are included in the court record, and local coverage of the sentence was reported by FOX6 Milwaukee.
Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney said prosecutors hope the punishment sends a clear message that political anger does not excuse violence and that attacks on public offices will be met with serious consequences. He noted the case was investigated by the City of Fond du Lac Police Department with help from the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation. That statement, along with additional local reporting on the sentence, was summarized by WBAY.
