Rioter who bragged she wouldn’t go to jail gets time behind bars
A real estate agent from suburban Dallas who flaunted her participation in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol on social media and later bragged she wasn’t going to jail because she is white, has blond hair and a good job was sentenced Thursday to two months behind bars.
While some rioters sentenced for the same misdemeanor conviction have received only probation or home confinement, prosecutors sought incarceration for Jennifer Leigh Ryan, of Frisco, Texas, saying she has shown a lack of candor and remorse for her actions when the pro-Trump mob attacked the Capitol building and delayed Congress’ certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.
They also said Ryan’s belief that she’s shielded from punishment shows she doesn’t grasp the seriousness of her crime.
Ryan wasn’t facing a felony for more serious conduct, but U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said she was still among the mob who overnumbered police in an attack that led to the deaths of five people and will have a lasting effect on government institutions.
Though Ryan said she was sorry for her actions, Cooper questioned whether she is remorseful and has respect for the law.
“Your actions since Jan. 6 make me doubt some of those things,” the judge said.
Prosecutors said Ryan traveled to Washington on a jet chartered by a Facebook friend, described Trump’s rally before the riot as a prelude to war, livestreamed her entry into the building as alarms sounded, participated in chants of “Fight For Trump,” tweeted a photo of herself next to broken windows outside the Capitol and later said she deserved a medal for what she did.
Her lawyer responded that she was in the building for only two minutes, didn’t act violently and has a First Amendment right to speak up on social media.
The judge then referred to Ryan’s March 26 tweet in which she wrote, “Definitely not going to jail. Sorry I have blonde hair white skin a great job a great future and I’m not going to jail. Sorry to rain on your hater parade. I did nothing wrong.”
She is the 10th person charged in the Jan. 6 attack to get a jail or prison sentence. More than 650 people have been charged for their actions at the Capitol. Ryan is expected to start serving her sentence in January.
Biden administration sues Texas: The Biden administration on Thursday sued Texas over new voting rules that outlasted a summer of dramatic protests by Democrats, who face fading hopes of overhauling the nation’s election laws in response to a wave of new restrictions in Republican-led states.
The lawsuit does not challenge the entirety of a sweeping measure signed in September by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas, which already has some of the nation’s toughest voting rules. It instead targets provisions surrounding mail-in voting requirements and voter assistance, which the Justice Department argues violate federal civil rights protections.
The Justice Department will continue to use all the authorities at its disposal to protect this fundamental pillar of our society.”
Opponents of the Texas law known as Senate Bill 1 had already sued the state, accusing Republicans of setting out to disenfranchise minorities and other Democratic-leaning voters.
Abbott and other Texas Republicans say the changes provide safeguards against voter fraud, which is rare.
Census director: Robert Santos was confirmed Thursday as the next U.S. Census Bureau director, becoming the first person of color to lead the nation’s largest statistical agency on a permanent basis.
The Senate approved Santos, a third-generation Mexican American statistician from San Antonio, Texas, for the job overseeing a bureau that conducts the once-a-decade census, often described as the nation’s largest civilian mobilization, as well as surveys that create the data infrastructure of the nation. In his new job, Santos, 66, will be responsible for leading the agency as it lays the groundwork for executing the next census in 2030, as well as shepherding the last releases of data gathered during the 2020 census and supervising other bureau programs.
Ethiopia Tigray crisis: Ethiopia’s government marked a year of war by lashing out Thursday in response to international alarm about hate speech, comparing the rival Tigray forces to “a rat that strays far from its hole” and saying the country is close to “burying the evil forces.”
The statement from the government communication service came amid urgent new efforts to calm the escalating war as a U.S. special envoy arrived and the president of neighboring Kenya and others called for an immediate cease-fire.
U.S. special envoy Jeffrey Feltman, who this week insisted that “there are many, many ways to initiate discreet talks” toward peace, met Thursday with Ethiopia’s deputy prime minister and ministers of defense and finance, and his visit continues Friday.
Merck COVID-19 pill: Britain granted conditional authorization on Thursday to the first pill shown to successfully treat COVID-19 so far. It also is the first country to OK the treatment from drugmaker Merck, although it wasn’t immediately clear how quickly the pill would be available.
The pill was licensed for adults 18 and older who have tested positive for COVID19 and have at least one risk factor for developing severe disease, such as obesity or heart disease.
Patients with mild-to-moderate COVID19 would take four pills of the drug, molnupiravir, twice a day for five days.
An antiviral pill that reduces symptoms and speeds recovery could prove groundbreaking, easing caseloads on hospitals and helping to curb outbreaks in poorer countries.
Molnupiravir is also pending review with regulators in the U.S., the European Union and elsewhere. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced last month it would convene a panel of independent experts to scrutinize the pill’s safety and effectiveness in late November.
Epstein’s ex-girlfriend’s jury selection: The weekslong process of selecting a jury for the federal sex trafficking trial of financier Jeffrey Epstein’s ex-girlfriend, a British socialite, began Thursday with a video introduction from the judge in which she called jury trials the “bedrock of American democracy.”
Defendant Ghislaine Maxwell has said she is innocent of charges alleging that she recruited teenagers who were not yet adults for Epstein to sexually abuse from 1994 to 2004, Judge Alison J. Nathan told 132 prospective jurors.
Although jurors will not be sequestered, their privacy will be ensured because they will be referenced by numbers and will be transported to and from the trial each day, Nathan said.
Oral questioning of jurors begins mid-month, with opening statements scheduled for Nov. 29.