Capitol Riots 2
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A majority of the people arrested for Capitol riot had a history of financial trouble
Trail of bankruptcies, tax problems and bad debts raises questions for researchers trying to understand motivations for attack
Jenna Ryan seemed like an unlikely participant in the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. She was a real estate agent from Texas. She flew into Washington on a private jet. And she was dressed that day in clothes better suited for a winter tailgate than a war.
Yet Ryan, 50, is accused of rushing into the Capitol past broken glass and blaring security alarms and, according to federal prosecutors, shouting: “Fight for freedom! Fight for freedom!”
But in a different way, she fit right in.
Despite her outward signs of success, Ryan had struggled financially for years. She was still paying off a $37,000 lien for unpaid federal taxes when she was arrested. She’d nearly lost her home to foreclosure before that. She filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and faced another IRS tax lien in 2010.
Nearly 60 percent of the people facing charges related to the Capitol riot showed signs of prior money troubles, including bankruptcies, notices of eviction or foreclosure, bad debts, or unpaid taxes over the past two decades, according to a Washington Post analysis of public records for 125 defendants with sufficient information to detail their financial histories.
The group’s bankruptcy rate — 18 percent — was nearly twice as high as that of the American public, The Post found. A quarter of them had been sued for money owed to a creditor. And 1 in 5 of them faced losing their home at one point, according to court filings.
The financial problems are revealing because they offer potential clues for understanding why so many Trump supporters — many with professional careers and few with violent criminal histories — were willing to participate in an attack egged on by the president’s rhetoric painting him and his supporters as undeserving victims.
While no single factor explains why someone decided to join in, experts say, Donald Trump and his brand of grievance politics tapped into something that resonated with the hundreds of people who descended on the Capitol in a historic burst of violence.
“I think what you’re finding is more than just economic insecurity but a deep-seated feeling of precarity about their personal situation,” said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a political science professor who helps run the Polarization and Extremism Research Innovation Lab at American University, reacting to The Post’s findings. “And that precarity — combined with a sense of betrayal or anger that someone is taking something away — mobilized a lot of people that day.”
The financial missteps by defendants in the attempted insurrection ranged from small debts of a few thousand dollars more than a decade ago to unpaid tax bills of $400,000 and homes facing foreclosure in recent years. Some of these people seemed to have regained their financial footing. But many of them once stood close to the edge.
Ryan had nearly lost everything. And the stakes seemed similarly high to her when she came to Washington in early January. She fully believed Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen and that he was going to save the country, she said in an interview with The Post.
But now — facing federal charges and abandoned by people she considered “fellow patriots” — she said she feels betrayed.
“I bought into a lie, and the lie is the lie, and it’s embarrassing,” she said. “I regret everything.”
The FBI has said it found evidence of organized plots by extremist groups. But many of the people who came to the Capitol on Jan. 6 — including Ryan — appeared to have adopted their radical outlooks more informally, consuming conspiracy theories about the election on television, social media and right-wing websites.
The poor and uneducated are not more likely to join extremist movements, according to experts. Two professors a couple of years ago found the opposite in one example: an unexpectedly high number of engineers who became Islamist radicals.
In the Capitol attack, business owners and white-collar workers made up 40 percent of the people accused of taking part, according to a study by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago. Only 9 percent appeared to be unemployed.
The participation of people with middle- and upper-middle-class positions fits with research suggesting that the rise of right-wing extremist groups in the 1950s was fueled by people in the middle of society who felt they were losing status and power, said Pippa Norris, a political science professor at Harvard University who has studied radical political movements.
Miller-Idriss said she was struck by a 2011 study that found household income was not a factor in whether a young person supported the extreme far right in Germany. But a highly significant predictor was whether they had lived through a parent’s unemployment.
“These are people who feel like they’ve lost something,” Miller-Idriss said.
Going through a bankruptcy or falling behind on taxes, even years earlier, could provoke a similar response.
“They know it can be lost. They have that history — and then someone comes along and tells you this election has been stolen,” Miller-Idriss said. “It taps into the same thing.”
Playing on personal pain
Trump’s false claims about election fraud — refuted by elections officials and rejected by judges — seemed tailored to exploit feelings about this precarious status, said Don Haider-Markel, a political science professor at the University of Kansas who studies political extremism.
“It’s hard to ignore with a Trump presidency that message that ‘the America you knew and loved is going away, and I’m going to protect it,’” Haider-Markel said. “They feel, at a minimum, that they’re under threat.”
While some of the financial problems were old, the pandemic’s economic toll appeared to inflict fresh pain for some of the people accused of participating in the attempted insurrection.
A California man filed for bankruptcy one week before allegedly joining the attack, according to public records. A Texas man was charged with entering the Capitol one month after his company was slapped with a nearly $2,000 state tax lien.
Several young people charged in the attack came from families with histories of financial duress.
The parents of Riley June Williams — a 22-year-old who allegedly helped to steal a laptop from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Capitol office — filed for bankruptcy when she was a child, according to public records. A house owned by her mother faced foreclosure when she was a teenager, records show. Recently, a federal judge placed Williams on home confinement with her mother in Harrisburg, Pa. Her federal public defender did not respond to a request for comment.
People with professional careers such as respiratory therapist, nurse and lawyer were also accused of joining in.
One of them was William McCall Calhoun, 57, a well-known lawyer in Americus, Ga., 130 miles south of Atlanta, who was hit with a $26,000 federal tax lien in 2019, according to public records. A woman who knows Calhoun, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly, said he started to show strong support for Trump only in the past year. An attorney for Calhoun declined to comment.
Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by police when she tried to leap through a door’s broken window inside the Capitol, had struggled to run a pool-service company outside San Diego and was saddled with a $23,000 judgment from a lender in 2017, according to court records.
Financial problems were also apparent among people federal authorities said were connected to far-right nationalist groups, such as the Proud Boys.
Dominic Pezzola, who federal authorities said is a member of the Proud Boys, is accused of being among the first to lead the surge inside the Capitol and helping to overwhelm police. Up to 140 officers were injured in the storming of the Capitol and one officer, Brian Sicknick, was killed.
Pezzola, of Rochester, N.Y., also has been named in state tax warrants totaling more than $40,000 over the past five years, according to public records. His attorney declined to comment.
The roots of extremism are complex, said Haider-Markel.
“Somehow they’ve been wronged, they’ve developed a grievance, and they tend to connect that to some broader ideology,” he said.
The price of insurrection
Ryan, who lives in Frisco, Texas, a Dallas suburb, said she was slow to become a big Trump supporter.
She’s been described as a conservative radio talk show host. But she wasn’t a budding Rush Limbaugh. Her AM radio show each Sunday focused on real estate, and she paid for the airtime. She stopped doing the show in March, when the pandemic hit.
But she continued to run a service that offers advice for people struggling with childhood trauma and bad relationships. Ryan said the work was based on the steps she took to overcome her own rough upbringing.
Twice divorced and struggling with financial problems, Ryan developed an outlook that she described as politically conservative, leaning toward libertarian.
But politics was not her focal point until recently. She recalled being upset when President Barack Obama won reelection in 2012. And she preferred Trump over Hillary Clinton four years later. But she said she wasn’t strident in her support for Trump.
That changed as the 2020 election approached.
She said she started reading far-right websites such as Epoch Times and Gateway Pundit. She began streaming shows such as Alex Jones’s “Infowars” and former Trump campaign manager Stephen K. Bannon’s “War Room: Pandemic.” She began following conspiracy theories related to QAnon, a sprawling set of false claims that have coalesced into an extremist ideology. She said she didn’t know if the posts were true, but she was enthralled.
“It was all like a football game. I was sucked into it. Consumed by it,” Ryan said.
She attended the first protest in her life in April, going to Austin to vent about the state’s pandemic lockdown orders. That was followed by a rally for Shelley Luther, who gained national attention for reopening her beauty salon in Dallas in defiance of the lockdown.
Ryan said she traveled to Trump’s “Save America” rally on a whim. A Facebook friend offered to fly her and three others on a private plane.
They arrived in Washington a day early and got rooms at a Westin hotel downtown, Ryan said.
It was her first trip to the nation’s capital.
The next morning, Jan. 6, the group of friends left the hotel at 6 a.m., Ryan said. She was cold, so she bought a $35 knit snow hat with a “45” emblem from a souvenir shop. They then followed the crowd streaming toward the National Mall.
“My main concern was there were no bathrooms. I kept asking, ‘Where are the bathrooms?’” she said. “I was just having fun.”
They listened to some of the speakers. But mostly they walked around and took photos. She felt like a tourist. They grabbed sandwiches at a Wawa convenience store for lunch. They hired a pedicab to take them back to the hotel.
She drank white wine while the group watched on television as Congress prepared to certify the electoral college votes. They listened to clips of Trump telling rallygoers to walk to the Capitol and saying, “We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
They decided to leave the hotel and go to the Capitol.
Ryan said she was reluctant.
But she also posted a video to her Facebook account that showed her looking into a bathroom mirror and saying, according to an FBI account of her charges: “We’re gonna go down and storm the capitol. They’re down there right now and that’s why we came and so that’s what we are going to do. So wish me luck.”
She live-streamed on Facebook. She posted photos to Twitter. She got closer to the Capitol with each post. She stood on the Capitol’s steps. She flashed a peace symbol next to a smashed Capitol window. The FBI also found video of her walking through doors on the west side of the Capitol in the middle of a packed crowd, where she said into a camera, according to the bureau: “Y’all know who to hire for your realtor. Jenna Ryan for your realtor.”
The FBI document does not state how long Ryan spent inside the building. She said it was just a few minutes. She and her new friends eventually walked back to the hotel, she said.
“We just stormed the Capital,” Ryan tweeted that afternoon. “It was one of the best days of my life.”
She said she realized she was in trouble only after returning to Texas. Her phone was blowing up with messages. Her social media posts briefly made her the infamous face of the riots: the smiling real estate agent who flew in a private jet to an insurrection.
Nine days later, she turned herself in to the FBI. She was charged with two federal misdemeanors related to entering the Capitol building and disorderly conduct. Last week, federal authorities filed similar charges against two others on her flight: Jason L. Hyland, 37, of Frisco, who federal authorities said organized the trip, and Katherine S. Schwab, 32, of Colleyville, Texas.
Ryan remained defiant at first. She clashed with people who criticized her online. She told a Dallas TV station she deserved a presidential pardon.
Then Trump left for Florida. President Biden took office. And Ryan, at home in Texas, was left to wonder what to do with her two mini-goldendoodle dogs if she goes to prison.
“Not one patriot is standing up for me,” Ryan said recently. “I’m a complete villain. I was down there based on what my president said. ‘Stop the steal.’ Now I see that it was all over nothing. He was just having us down there for an ego boost. I was there for him.”
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I read that article this morning and not sure what angle they were trying to achieve?
This article can be put in the White Privilege thread too.
We have a vast wealth gap between white and Black America that renders such an article pretty fucking moot.
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana; 2025: Pitt1, Pitt2
Maybe some people need a little perspective.
As a matter of fact, your entire existence is based on war and violence.
What if that was 1st nation peoples that attempted that? It would be in their rights...
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
And if our 1st want to overthrow our government...they’d have my support.
The peace terms that ended the war were those of status quo ante bellum, “the state of things as they were before the war.” So, while the War of 1812 was legally a tie—a wash—in terms of territorial acquisitions, historians now look at its long term effects to judge who won.
The Americans declared war (for the first time in their nation’s history) to stop British impressment, reopen the trade lanes with France, remove British support from Native American tribes, and to secure their territorial honor and integrity in the face of their old rulers. All four of these goals were achieved by the time peace broke out, although some British measures were scheduled to be repealed before the war had even begun. By establishing a respected footing with Britain and Canada, the United States also experienced a commercial boom in the years after the war. The overall result of the war was probably positive for the nation as a whole.
The British gained little to nothing from the war, save for an honorable friendship with the United States. Valuable resources were diverted from the battlefields of Europe for the War of 1812, which brought no land or treasure to the crown. The British also lost their Native American lodgment against United States expansion, further unleashing the growth of a major global trade competitor. However, the British did ultimately defeat France in their long war while avoiding a fiasco in North America, which is a considerable victory in the context of the global conflict they waged.
Many Native American tribes fought against the United States in the Northwest, united as a Confederacy led by a Shawnee man named Tecumseh. Many of these tribes had allied with the British during the Revolutionary War as well. The Creek tribe in the Southwest battled settlers and soldiers throughout the War of 1812, eventually allying with a column of British regulars. In reaching peace through status quo antebellum, however, the Native Americans all lost their main request of a recognized nation in North America. British support also evaporated in the years after the war, further quickening the loss of Native lands.
Here's a pretty good article explaining the War of 1812: The US won it's "Independence" and the British won where it counted, at Waterloo. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/british-view-war-1812-quite-differently-americans-do-180951852/
Former FBI official, a Navy veteran, is ‘key figure’ in Jan. 6 riot, prosecutors allege
A former U.S. Navy intelligence officer and FBI official from Virginia has emerged as a “key figure” in the federal investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, as U.S. prosecutors alleged Thursday that he organized a group of trained fighters and was in contact with self-styled militia groups including the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Three Percenters.
In asking a federal judge to detain Thomas Edward Caldwell, 66, pending trial, prosecutors revealed some of the most explicit evidence to date of discussions allegedly indicating coordination and planning among groups under scrutiny for the assault on Congress that left one police officer and four others dead, delayed the confirmation of President Biden’s victory and led to charges against more than 200 people.
Prosecutors allege Caldwell used his military and law enforcement background to plan violence — including possible snipers and weapons stashed on a boat along the Potomac River — weeks ahead of the Capitol insurrection. Caldwell, of Berryville, Va., is charged on counts of conspiracy, obstructing an official proceeding, trespassing, destruction of government property, and aiding and abetting.
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes — identified as Person One by prosecutors in documents charging Caldwell — called on members of the group to “stand tall in support of President Trump” on Jan. 6. and, prosecutors say, Caldwell responded. He had been coordinating with the Oath Keepers since the week after the election, prosecutors allege, when he hosted members at his Virginia home for a pro-Trump protest that turned violent.
“Next time (and there WILL be a next time) we will have learned and we will be stronger,” he messaged others afterward, according to the court documents. “I think there will be real violence for all of us next time. . . . I am already working on the next D.C. op.”
Associates of the Oath Keepers had a chat group on the encrypted app Signal to prepare for Jan. 6, according to prosecutors, while Three Percenters met on Zoom.
Five more charged in Capitol riot allegedly teamed with Kansas City Proud Boys
Caldwell’s lawyer, Thomas K. Plofchan Jr., didn’t address the new allegations in the government brief when reached Thursday but reasserted his client’s innocence. Plofchan argued that the federal prosecutors didn’t address the two issues pending before the court — whether Caldwell, an ailing 66-year-old, is a flight risk or a danger to the community.
Caldwell holds a top-secret security clearance and worked as both a government official and contractor, Plofchan has said. Records show Caldwell won repeated jobs for information technology work from the Drug Enforcement Administration, including one $500,000 solicitation for computer-related services.
Prosecutors alleged in Thursday’s court filing that Caldwell’s military and law enforcement background probably taught him operational tactics that he used “to the detriment of the citizens he at one time swore to serve.”
After the November protest, Caldwell suggested that in its next D.C. foray the group organize into four-man teams with snipers and getaway drivers, according to messages included in the Thursday filing. For Jan. 6., according to the court filing, he suggested stashing “heavy weapons” in a boat on the Potomac River. He shopped online for a “Surgical Steel Tomahawk Axe” and a concealed firearm built to look like a cellphone, prosecutors alleged, and discussed coordination with Proud Boys and Three Percenters.
Five people who prosecutors allege are associated with the Proud Boys were arrested Thursday and charged with crimes connected to the Jan. 6. riot. Prosecutors say several rioters appeared to be associated with the Oath Keeper and Three Percenter movements. Both are loosely organized collections of armed, right-wing groups that focus on recruiting among military and law enforcement veterans. The Proud Boys are a mostly male far-right group that has a history of violence.
On cusp of impeachment trial, court documents point to how Trump’s rhetoric fueled rioters who attacked Capitol
On Dec. 23, Caldwell texted a contact with the Three Percenters saying that he expected Oath Keepers from North Carolina, whom he hosted in November, to return for Jan. 6, according to court documents. Prosecutors also said he expected “a big turn out of the Proud Boys” and local Vietnamese Trump supporters. One week later, prosecutors alleged, Caldwell followed up with the contact about plans by his group’s members.
The Three Percenters said on Twitter that “this guy may have reached out to a member, but nothing was coordinated. In fact, we didn’t participate in the Capitol breach.”
Caldwell also compiled a “death list” that included a state election official, prosecutors alleged, and described his political enemies as “cockroaches” and “maggots” that he would dispose of by “killing them, shooting them, and mutilating their corpses to use them as shields.”
In a statement after Caldwell’s indictment, Plofchan said Caldwell is being used as a “scapegoat” and was merely “an observer of increased frustration by some members of the public.” He did not enter the Capitol, Plofchan said, and is not an Oath Keeper.
Prosecutors say it is irrelevant whether Caldwell personally breached the building.
“Like any coach on the sideline, Caldwell was just as responsible as his players on the field for achieving what he viewed as victory that day,” they wrote.
In an interview last month, Rhodes — who has not been charged — said Caldwell “helped” Oath Keepers during the November rally because “he’s a local,” but is “not a leader of any kind.”
Read the defense motion for release
Read the U.S. motion for Thomas Caldwell’s detention
Among those who prosecutors allege coordinated with Caldwell before and on Jan. 6 was Jessica Watkins, a 38-year-old Oath Keeper from Ohio. She too is a “key figure” in the violence and too dangerous to be released, prosecutors said in a Thursday filing.
In a search of Watkins’s home on Jan. 17, federal authorities say they found protective equipment and battle gear, medical supplies, a mini-drone, firearms, a paintball gun, a “bomb making recipe,” zip-ties and pool cues cut down to baton size.
Both she and Caldwell, prosecutors say, “harbor . . . a doomsday mindset that, if anything, risks greater radicalization if released into a community of like-minded individuals.”
On Jan. 21, prosecutors note that Rhodes called Biden’s presidency “illegitimate” and said that while he was “not calling for the initiation of violence,” his followers should “BE PREPARED TO MOVE.”
Watkins talked about going “underground” if the attempt to keep Trump in power was unsuccessful, according to the court records. Caldwell, prosecutors say, was ready for the next fight: “So it begins,” he messaged a contact the day after the riot. “They murdered at least one of us. This is OUR Boston Massacre.”
No attorney is listed for Watkins, who told the Ohio Capital Journal in January that she didn’t commit a crime and that the riot was a peaceful protest that turned violent.
Aaron C. Davis and Tom Jackman contributed to this report.
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
If anyone recognizes this man PLEASE call the FBI Most Wanted 1-800-225-5324 or submit a tip online at tips.fbi.gov
Or call your local FBI Photograph #150 -AFO
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
What I do find interesting is that people put serious thought into this before hand.
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana; 2025: Pitt1, Pitt2
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana; 2025: Pitt1, Pitt2
The fix is in.