A Texas realtor who took a private jet to the Capitol last week and called it “one of the best days of my life” was charged on Friday for participating in the violent uprising.
Jenna Ryan, a real estate broker and life coach in Frisco, Texas, was accused of intentionally entering or staying in a restricted building without legal authorities and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds after documenting her two-day tour of DC on social media.
She was among yet another handful of rioters arrested by the feds on Friday, including Dominic “Spazzo” Pezzola, a member of the Proud Boys who allegedly broke a Capitol window with a police shield.
Ryan went on a public relations offensive after the turmoil, telling Spectrum News that she “heeded my president’s call” and proudly invaded Capitol because the election was rigged. “It’s not necessarily about taking over the Capitol, it’s about ‘we, the people, own this building’,” she said.
According to a criminal complaint filed with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Ryan diligently documented his participation in the crowd – starting with his flight on a “small private aircraft” on January 5.
The next day, she posted a selfie in the bathroom mirror on Facebook with the caption: “Let’s go down and invade the Capitol. They are there now and that’s why we came and that’s what we’re going to do. So wish me luck. “She added:” This is a prelude to war. “
In a video now excluded, she filmed herself in a crowd entering the Capitol through the entrance to the Rotunda. She passed broken windows, went up some stairs and said, “We are going to get in here. Life or death, it doesn’t matter. Here we go.”
Then she turned to the camera and added, “You know who to hire for your realtor. Jenna Ryan for her realtor. “
The moment Ryan reached the door of a building “clearly desecrated, with broken glass windows and security alarms going off,” she shouted “USA! USA! “And” Here we are, in the name of Jesus! “
She also took pictures of herself in front of a broken window with the caption: “Window in the capital [sic]. And if the news doesn’t stop lying about us, we’ll go after your studios next … ‘”
Hours later, Ryan posted on Twitter: “We just invaded the Capital. It was one of the best days of my life. “
But as the reaction to her antics grew in the Lone Star State, she gave several interviews and flooded her social networks with posts defending herself and saying she was “really heartbroken for the people who lost their lives”.
Then, in an interview on Thursday with CandysDirt.com, Ryan said that she and her rowdy colleagues didn’t care that someone was shot because “our freedom is more important to us than our lives”.
Ryan, who runs a life coaching company called SelfLoveU and has hosted an advertising segment on a local radio station, delved into Twitter, retweeting electoral conspiracies and offering to provide real estate services if Texas splits from the Union.
“I cannot face federal charges for exercising my right to freedom of expression and assembly,” she wrote last week, adding that she was “an innocent person who is not a professional heckler; someone just living and defending what I believe in. ”
“You can never cancel Jenna Ryan,” she wrote. However, on Monday, she said her publisher had canceled her self-help book that was due out next month.
The president of the National Association of Realtors, Charlie Oppler, issued a statement condemning her.
“The scenes we are watching unfold as a nation are shocking and leave us with no belief,” said Oppler. “America’s largest trade association defends our democracy and the century-old observance of peaceful protests and peaceful transfer of power across our nation. What happened at the United States Capitol today was an attack on both. “
A Kentucky man was also arrested on Friday after watching the riot with his wife, admitting investigators that they joined the crowd after Trump said “something about taking Pennsylvania Avenue”.
According to a criminal complaint, the FBI identified Robert Bauer after someone called the whistleblower line to say that Bauer had posted photos on Facebook – including one on Capitol Hill “showing the middle finger”.
Bauer admitted to FBI agents that he traveled from Kentucky to DC and stayed with his cousin, Edward Hemenway, who joined him on the Capitol. He said the trio “marched to the US Capitol because President Trump said to do so.”
Trump denied having played any role in inciting the crowd, claiming that his January 6 rally speech – in which he told his supporters to go to the Capitol to protest the certification of congressional electoral votes – was “entirely appropriate”.
According to the complaint, Bauer told the FBI that he did not think he had done anything wrong because “there were no signs affixed that he could not enter” the Capitol.
He said he met a policeman on entering the Capitol who “grabbed his hand, shook it and said, ‘It’s your home now’”. Bauer added that he thought the policeman was “acting out of fear”.
He said the crowd was “angry at pedophiles, the news cycle and the loss of their business during the blockade”.