A Capitol rioter who said she wanted to kill Nancy Pelosi has taken a deal with prosecutors, pleading guilty to one misdemeanor.
According to the criminal complaint against her, Dawn Bancroft, 59, filmed a video of herself as she was leaving the Capitol on 6 January, saying, “We were looking for Nancy to shoot her in the friggin’ brain but we didn’t find her.”
After a tipster sent FBI agents the video, Bancroft was charged with entering and remaining in a restricted building, parading in a Capitol building, and two counts of disorderly conduct.
On Tuesday, she pleaded guilty only to the parading charge, a misdemeanor that carries a prison sentence of up to six months. It’s a deal that prosecutors have offered numerous defendants as the number of people charged in the insurrection rises past 600.
At the hearing, District Judge Emmet Sullivan asked prosecutors why they were dropping the other charges, considering Bancroft’s violent language.
“That’s really troubling. It’s horrible. It’s outrageous,” Judge Sullivan said, according to CNN. “Does it not rise to the level of a threat?” Prosecutors explained that since Bancroft said the words on her way out of the Capitol, it would be hard to prove she meant them. Bancroft herself insisted that she did not.
“I said it in a jovial way,” she said. “We were joking and laughing on the way back to the train. It was a dumb, stupid comment. I did not mean it.”
She also apologised for her actions.
“I would like to accept my responsibility for what I did, for my part in January 6,” she said.
Judge Sullivan told her he would have more to say at her sentencing.
“I understand you were leaving the Capitol,” he told Bancroft. “I understand the government’s logic in not prosecuting you... but I don’t want to, in any way, minimize the very troubling nature of a pretty outrageous statement.”
Bancroft’s sentencing is scheduled for 25 January.
