According to federal prosecutors, a mother of eight in Pennsylvania was arrested on the run by authorities for her role in the Capitol riot.
Rachel Marie Powell of Sandy Lake, Pennsylvania, “is in custody,” Margaret Philbin, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Pittsburgh, told The Daily Beast.
According to Philbin, Powell, 40, was arrested in New Castle on Thursday night. She could not be immediately reached for comment, and she does not yet have a lawyer in the court record.
The cheese and yogurt supplier – called the ‘bullhorn lady’ after a video appeared of Powell apparently shouting orders by a bullhorn during the January 6 firing of the Capitol – was apparently not home when the FBI came to her home Thursday afternoon did not strike. Neighbors told local news reporters that Powell and her family had lived there for several years, but mostly kept to themselves.
According to a lawsuit filed in federal court on Friday, Powell is facing charges of obstruction, weakening of government property, entering a restricted building with a dangerous weapon and violent trespassing / disorder. She would appear before the judge at 15:00
According to the documentation, Powell used a pipe to break a window at the Capitol, causing more than $ 1,000 in damages. An anonymous tipster sent Powell out to the FBI for the first time, he explains, and agents gave the link to Powell’s Facebook profile. Agents were able to match photos of Powell, wearing a distinctive set of earmuffs, with those she had seen wearing at the Capitol.
After Powell was seen on video on January 6 in a pink hat and sunglasses, Powell got her distinctive name, though she was also known as ‘Pink Hat Lady’.
“People will probably have to coordinate together if you’re going to take this building,” Powell shouted through a broken window at a group of insurgents in the Capitol. “We have another window to break to make getting in and out easy.”
Powell, who became the subject of her own FBI “Wanted” poster, agrees to an interview with Ronan Farrow of The New Yorker before she was charged.
Powell, originally from Anaheim, California, told Farrow that she acted spontaneously on January 6 and was not ‘part of a conspiracy’.
“I have no military background … I am a mother of eight children,” she said. “That’s it. I work. And I garden. And raise chickens. And sell cheese at a farmers market …. Listen, if someone doesn’t help and direct people, more people die? That’s all I’m going to say about it. “I can say no more. I need to talk to a lawyer.”
Powell has apparently radicalized over the past year or so: when she is not manning a table at local farmers markets, Powell uses Facebook to post topics such as yoga and organic food. However, she has recently begun to express increasingly extreme political views that include various conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and unfounded doubts about the validity of the 2020 presidential election.
‘It’s not on [sic] wake up, say no and restore freedoms, ”she wrote on Facebook last May.
Powell was allegedly influenced by Infowars founder Alex Jones, who claims the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax, and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who made numerous false claims while acting as Donald Trump’s served personal attorney.
Deborah Lemons, Powell’s mother, told Farrow that Powell was detained during her carjacking during a car hijacking when she was a child. She said it “surprised” her that her daughter – with whom Lemons had a strained relationship for the past few years – would take part in the riot in the Capitol that had been at the wrong end of violence in the past.
“She knows very well what it’s like to wonder if she’s going to lose her life,” Lemons said.