Rachel Powell (left) during a Steve Bannon interview ahead of sentencing (X/@MeidasTouch screengrab), (right) in a mug shot after her arrest.
A Pennsylvania mother of eight known as “Bullhorn Lady” since she was identified as a window-smasher and boastful obstructionist at the tip of the pro-Trump mob’s spear on Jan. 6, falsely believing her preferred candidate won the 2020 election, has been sentenced to serve several years in prison for numerous crimes.
Rachel Marie Powell, now 43, was convicted months ago of all nine charges she faced following a May bench trial before Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Ronald Reagan appointee. Those charges included interference with a law enforcement officer during civil disorder, obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and several standard Jan. 6 misdemeanors for breaching the Capitol.
On Tuesday, Powell received 4.75 years in prison plus three years of supervised release, a $5,000 fine, and she must pay $2,753 in restitution, according to Jordan Fischer of local CBS affiliate WUSA.
? SENTENCE: Rachel Powell ordered to serve 57 months in prison followed by 36 months on supervised release. Judge Lamberth also imposed $2,753 in restitution and a $5,000 fine. Story TK. https://t.co/7bxDIXGJ2r
— Jordan Fischer (@JordanOnRecord) October 17, 2023
“I hate how this feels. Like I threw my family in the garbage,” Powell reportedly said at sentencing.
Powell made news nationally after a detailed interview with Ronan Farrow was published in The New Yorker, in which she confirmed her bullhorn activities directing the mob on Jan. 6 while claiming she was trying to prevent people from dying.
“Listen, if somebody doesn’t help and direct people, then do more people die?” Powell asked. “That’s all I’m going to say about that. I can’t say anymore. I need to talk to an attorney.”
After she obtained her first attorney, Powell was for a time in hot water with Judge Lamberth because she was spotted wearing a hole-filled mask amid the COVID-19 pandemic after having been ordered to “wear a mask whenever she leaves her residence” as a condition of her pretrial release.
The judge ultimately accepted Powell’s apology at a hearing and decided not to jail her, after her lawyer at the time described the mesh mask as a misguided homage to pop star Lana Del Ray. Eventually, though, Powell had to get a new lawyer.
During the lead-up to sentencing, Powell’s current attorney Nicholas Smith wrote in a memorandum that his client was “remorseful for her outrageous conduct that day” and asked the judge to sentence Powell to three years of probation and two years of home detention.
The defense attorney asked the judge to consider that Powell’s three youngest kids live with her and that, were she to be sentenced to prison, the “plan” was to have her 15-year-old son “manage the family.”
At the same time, the lawyer asserted that Powell’s “upbringing was like something from Oliver Twist,” that is, something of a Dickensian hell marked by squalor and exposure to violence from an early age.
Smith argued that this “brutally harsh upbringing” led to “posttraumatic stress disorder; paranoid, schizoid and negativistic personality traits; and major depressive disorder,” which collectively made her “susceptible to manipulation — including of the sort that led her to the Capitol.”
Despite these arguments, Powell appeared on Steve Bannon’s show ahead of sentencing, with at least one MAGA-hatted child visible in the background.
Rachel Powell “Bullhorn Lady” has her J6 sentencing tomorrow and can’t believe the govt is asking for 8 years: “it doesn’t make any sense to me. It was a mistake and I’m sorry. I wish I could pay for (the window). I did break a window. I was on the violent side of the building.” pic.twitter.com/WCnxuCaKFP
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 17, 2023
“I don’t understand why they’re asking for as much as they are,” Powell said about prosecutors’ request for 8 years of prison time. “It doesn’t make any sense to me because it was a mistake, and I’m sorry.”
“I did break a window, I did,” Powell acknowledged, claiming that after seeing Roseanne Boyland “dead at [her] feet,” she became “irrational” (Roseanne Boyland reportedly died of an amphetamine overdose; it was initially thought the mob trampled her to death).
“We’re not insurrectionists. We didn’t go there with a plan,” Powell continued.
In the government’s sentencing memorandum, Powell was described as remorseless and “one of the first rioters to break through onto Capitol grounds near the Peace
Circle.”
Through her bullhorn, she encouraged others to enter the Capitol, and said “people should probably coordinate together if you’re going to take the building.”
The day after Jan. 6, she posted on social media “we have given you all a chance to help us settle this peacefully.”
“We have been patient,” she added. “The time is up.”
In another Jan. 7 post, Powell wrote “IT WAS F—ING WAR TO GET IN. IF YOU WERE NOT HERE THEN STFU.” In yet another post Powell said the idea that Trump supporters were let into the Capitol by cops on Jan. 6 was false.
“[W]e weren’t f—king welcomed in you f—ing idiot,” that post said. “You weren’t even here so shut up and stop spouting facts like you know.”
“[T]hey didn’t open the gates,” Powell clarified. “The people trampled them. It was war.”
As a result of “egregious conduct” and remorseless after Jan. 6, the government sought an upward departure for sentencing, pointing to numerous online posts in which she cast herself as a victim.
Rachel Powell social media posts (government exhibit)
“Powell painted herself and other rioters as the victim of January 6, promoting falsehoods about her conduct on that day. An upward departure is appropriate to capture the full range of Powell’s actions, including her inciting violence before and after January 6, her effort to assume leadership of the mob and her persistent violence on January 6, her obstruction of justice, and her complete lack of remorse for her actions,” prosecutors said.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
