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Jack Cashill


NextImg:After Three Days of Deliberation, Jan. 6 Jury Convicts Great-Grandmother Rebecca Lavrenz

As each day passed without a verdict, Rebecca Lavrenz and her family were beginning to think that Rebecca just might make history. No D.C. jury had yet to acquit a Jan. 6 defendant. Late on Thursday, April 4, the third day of deliberation, those hopes were dashed. Rebecca was convicted on all four counts.

Rebecca Lavrenz is among the 10 women I profile in my forthcoming book, Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6. What attracted me to Rebecca’s story is that she is a great-grandmother — a “praying great-grandmother,” as she describes herself.

On New Years Day 2021, Rebecca got a call from her son asking if she intended to attend the “March to Save America” rally in Washington. Knowing his mom refused to fly because of mandatory masking, he hinted: You know its only a 25-hour drive. You can make it in two days.” Rebecca prayed about it and came to the conclusion: You know what, I think Gods telling me to go.” And so she went, stopping in St. Louis for a single overnight stay.

At approximately 2:43 p.m. on Jan. 6, Rebecca entered the Capitol through an open door on the more orderly east side of the Capitol. Said Rebecca, I felt that if those doors opened I was supposed to go through.” After entering, engulfed in a crowd, she ascended the east stairs and headed toward the Rotunda. She didnt yell, didnt shout, spoke to one police officer about nothing memorable, and saw no violence or vandalism. Although no one told her to leave, at 2:51 p.m. she climbed down the stairs she had just ascended and exited the building.

J. Edgar would be rolling over in his grave if he knew his beloved agents were tracking down great-grannies on misdemeanor charges, but that’s apparently the FBI’s new mission. On April 19, 2021, Patriots Day, the bureau came calling on Rebecca. Hearing a knock on the door of her semi-rural Colorado home, she opened it to find a male and a female agent who had come to investigate. Im sorry,” said Rebecca, Im in the middle of baking a cake for my sons birthday.” She asked if they could reschedule their visit. To her surprise, they agreed and returned on April 26 for a consensual interview.”

In the rush to round up “insurrectionists,” the FBI failed to devise a standard protocol for arresting suspects. One of the women I profile in Ashli, Dr. Simone Gold, got the full, 20-agent, battering ram treatment for a single misdemeanor. They arrested me,” Gold told Tucker Carlson. They [yell], ‘Put your hands up, put your hands up, face the wall, face the wall’; theyre screaming, ‘Face the wall’ — handcuffed, shackled, take me downtown, orange suit, strip search, holding cell, fluorescent lights — it was terrible — no phone call, no Miranda rights.”

In Gold’s Los Angeles, the neighbors would have applauded. In conservative Colorado Springs, a little more circumspection was in order. A few months after the interview, Rebecca heard back from the agents. They told her she had reason to be glad: She was only going to be charged with four misdemeanors. Glad?” said Rebecca. I shouldnt be charged with anything.” (READ MORE from Jack Cashill: George Floyd Revisited: Derek Chauvin Was Wrongfully Convicted)

On March 25, 2024, Rebecca finally went to trial before Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui at the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. She was charged with the same four misdemeanors as were many, perhaps most, of the 1,300 or so protestors arrested on Jan. 6: entering and remaining in a restricted building; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly conduct in a capitol building; parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a capitol.

I attended the trial on May 26. By that time, the jury had been selected and seated. Eight of the 14, including two alternates, were white. Eight were female. As one of Rebecca’s hard-boiled attorneys told me, The government strikes anyone who seems normal.” The common denominator among them seemed to be boredom. When the prosecutors elicited from a squat, female Capitol Police officer that she feared for her life, the jurors looked nonplussed. Living in a city whose media are geared to please the 95 percent of its audience that voted against Donald Trump, they had heard it all before.

I suspect, too, that Rebecca disappointed them. Human nature being what it is, they were likely hoping for some fire-breathing Proud Boy or Oath Keeper, a trophy perp whose conviction they could dine out on until Armageddon. Instead, they got the attractive, well-turned-out winner of the congeniality prize in the Miss Iowa contest a half century prior.

That evening, Laura and her two daughters visited “Freedom Corner,” a secluded spot wedged between the D.C. jail and the Congressional Cemetery. At 7:30 each evening for the last 600 or so nights, protesters have gathered there to remind the Jan. 6 prisoners inside the jail that they have not been forgotten. If the protest group has a leader, it is Micki Witthoeft, the plain-spoken, no-nonsense mother of Ashli Babbitt, the U.S. Air Force veteran shot to death inside the Capitol on Jan. 6. At 9 p.m. the protesters joined the prisoners via telephone to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” patriotism at its purest and rawest. After the anthem, Rebecca and her daughters headed out to prepare for the next day.

On Day 6, a Monday, Rebecca took to the witness stand in her own defense, wearing, says daughter Laura, “her beautiful yellow dress and blue high heels.” She remained on the stand throughout the morning and into the afternoon. This past week youve seen videos of what I look like on the outside,” she told the jury, “but now, I hope you get to see my heart.” Under questioning from her attorney, Rebecca described how she accepted God into her life as a teenager, met her future husband in high school, married him when he came back from Vietnam, and gave birth to four children.  She now has seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Rebecca Lavrenz and writer Jack Cashill (Jack Cashill/The American Spectator)

Rebecca Lavrenz and writer Jack Cashill (Jack Cashill/The American Spectator)

Rebecca talked at some length about her affection for the U.S. Constitution and her felt need to stand up for it. At one point, her attorney showed an image of Rebecca facing the crowd, her back to the Capitol doors. When asked what she was thinking at the moment, Rebecca choked back her tears to say, “I am standing here representing millions of other people who also love our country but couldnt be here with me.”

The three young prosecutors — all thin, white, and bespectacled — evoked Hannah Arendt’s immortal phrase “the banality of evil.” Arendt made that comment in reference to Nazi executioner-in-chief Adolf Eichmann. The prosecutors had not ascended to that level of evil, but in their untroubled eagerness to send a prayerful great-grandmother to prison, they seemed capable. When badgered, Rebecca retreated to her firmly held belief: It was my First Amendment Right to be seen and heard. I wanted my presence to be known.”

On Tuesday morning, Day 7, the jury received its instructions and began deliberating. At the end of the day, they still had not reached a verdict. This was encouraging. The jury took less than four hours to convict Guy Reffitt, the first Jan. 6 defendant to seek a trial by jury. Although Reffitt did not go into the Capitol, he was sentenced to more than seven years in prison for helping to “ignite the crowd.” His adolescent son turned him in. His wife Nicole attends the nightly vigil at Freedom Corner. She still wonders why the much more visible “igniter” of crowds, Ray Epps, received no jail time at all. 

On Wednesday, Day 8, the jury remained in deliberation for the entire day. “This means someone on that jury is obviously fighting for me,” Rebecca posted at day’s end, “and to me that means God is making tremendous power available through the fervent, heartfelt, continued prayers of you, His saints.” It seems likely that the other jurors finally wore that “someone” down. Sentencing to come.

Jack Cashill’s newest book, Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6, will be released this summer. On sale now is his book Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America’s Cities.