After breaching the Capitol on January 6, an Oklahoma woman who cloaked herself in a Donald Trump flag and complained that Nancy Pelosi’s office was “so gaudy” received little more than a slap on the wrist for her role in the insurrection.
President George W. Bush appointed U.S. District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton to sentence Tricia LaCount to 36 months of probation on Tuesday. Prosecutors claim that she attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally before marching to the Capitol, where she entered at 2:16 p.m., approximately three minutes after the breach of the Senate Wing Door. She departed at 3:30 p.m.
FBI agents apprehended LaCount after a witness, a 15-year Facebook friend, tipped them off. The defendant posted a video of LaCount in the building that day on Facebook.
“You got into the Capitol?!” a Facebook user responded.
“Absolutely!” LaCount replied.
LaCount commented on a second video showing her inside the office of the then-Speaker of the House, stating, “Pelosi’s office is so gaudy.” Every laptop had access to MSNBC Live, featuring a massive chandelier and a stunning fireplace.
On April 18, 2023, authorities in Oklahoma arrested LaCount. In July, she pleaded guilty to trespass.
In her sentencing memo, her defense attorney, Stephen Brennwald, admitted that LaCount entered the Capitol and was “awed by the building’s architecture” because she had never been inside before.
“Unfortunately, she did not know her way around the Capitol and consequently followed the crowd from hall to hall,” according to the paperwork. “She briefly ended up in former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. Her presence there was entirely accidental, as she had no knowledge of the Capitol’s layout and was not looking for that specific location.”
Brennwald claimed she did not destroy anything and was not violent that day, even offering an officer a bottle of water to help him rinse his tear-gassed eyes.
“Video recordings of her path through the Capitol do not show a woman who looked angry, upset, or enraged, as many other individuals appeared to be,” according to the paper. “Rather, Ms. LaCount was simply ‘there,’ following the crowd wherever it went.”
The lawyer stated that Ms. LaCount’s actions were the least criminal among all those who entered the Capitol building that day.
Prosecutors sought a sentence of 60 days in prison.
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Brennwald filed a motion to postpone LaCount’s sentencing hearing on November 12 in response to Donald Trump’s Nov. 4 presidential victory, in which he promised massive pardons and indicated that he would order the dismissal of Jan. 6 cases, prompting multiple defendants to make similar legal maneuvers, with varying degrees of success.
“As this Court is aware, the recent election resulted in the return of the former president to the presidency,” Brennwald wrote in his ruling. “The former president promised to dismiss cases related to the events of January 6, 2021, and/or pardon those involved. Proceeding with the hearing tomorrow would be a waste of resources.
It would waste the time of the court, government counsel, defense counsel, and court personnel. Furthermore, proceeding with the sentencing rather than continuing it would result in Ms. LaCount’s final conviction. This would mean that, rather than having her case dismissed, she would now have to file a pardon application, which would be costly and time-consuming.”
“There is no purpose defendant can discern in going forward tomorrow rather than pushing the hearing back several months, until the new administration can dispose of these cases as it has said it will,” according to him.
The judge denied the motion.
“As the Court has noted in other cases, ‘the potential future exercise of the discretionary pardon power, an Executive Branch authority, is irrelevant to the Court’s obligation to carry out the legal responsibilities of the Judicial Branch,” the order continued.
