Woman with bullhorn guilty for role on Jan. 6
Judge convicts the Pennsylvania resident who gave orders to Trump mob during attack on the Capitol.
A Pennsylvania woman who used a bullhorn to direct rioters attacking the U.S. Capitol was convicted Tuesday of charges that she joined the mob attempting to keep Joe Biden’s election from being certified.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth heard testimony without a jury before he convicted Rachel Marie Powell of felony charges stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, siege. Powell, who was convicted of all nine counts in her indictment, is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 17, according to court records.
Powell, 41, of Sandy Lake, Pa., had waived her right to a jury trial. The judge convicted her of charges that she interfered with police and obstructed the joint session of Congress certifying Biden’s 2020 victory over then-President Trump.
Powell joined a mob of rioters who confronted police officers at bicycle rack barriers on the west side of the Capitol. She used her back to push against the police line, prosecutors said.
A video shows Powell, in a distinctive pink hat and fur-lined jacket hoodie, using a bullhorn to encourage other rioters to “coordinate together if you’re going to take this building.” She also gave them “very detailed instructions” about the layout of the Capitol, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit.
At one point, Powell told rioters they had “another window to break.” She herself used an ice ax and a large pipe to break a window, according to prosecutors.
The judge said she can remain free until the hearing.
A lawyer for Powell had no comment on the verdict.
Powell played a “leading role” during the riot, a prosecutor said at a February 2021 hearing.
“She is front and center in the incursion,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Elizabeth Aloi added, according to a transcript.
Powell was arrested nearly a month after the assault on the Capitol. FBI agents searched her home and found several smashed cellphones as well as gun paraphernalia and weapons.
Powell and her ex-husband shared custody of six minor children in 2021. She left her children at home when she went to Washington for the so-called Stop the Steal rally, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors also said she “showed an inclination towards violence” before the Jan. 6 assault. She posted on Facebook in October 2020 that she agreed there was a “possibility of civil war.”
“Unfortunately, the only way this is probably capable of being fixed is bloodshed because I’m not so sure our government can be fixed the political way anymore,” she wrote.
Prosecutors also said Powell described her “surveillance” of an unidentified public official’s home in a November 2020 message to somebody who replied that they were “afraid to ask why” she was there.
More than 1,000 people have been charged and over 700 convicted in connection with the Capitol attack.