Capitol rioter downplays attack after apologizing for her crimes in court
By Mary Kay Mallonee and Devan Cole, CNN
The first Capitol rioter to be sentenced for crimes committed on January 6 downplayed the deadly attack Thursday, days after she apologized to a federal judge for her actions during the riot.
Anna Morgan-Lloyd, who spent 10 minutes inside the Capitol on January 6 and pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor for trespassing inside the Capitol as part of the crowd that day, claimed in an interview with Fox News that the rioters were polite as they attacked the Capitol.
“Where I was at, we seen nobody damage anything and people were actually very polite,” she said. “If anybody bumped into anybody it was, ‘Excuse me,’ and people were very polite and nobody was breaking anything.”
“It was calm enough that people were actually walking out of the Capitol building that worked there, walked right past us and they had no fear on their face at all.”
The comments from Morgan-Lloyd, 49, came a little more than a week after she wrote to a federal judge that she was sorry for her actions on January 6, which resulted in her being handed a probation sentence and a $500 fine on Wednesday.
“We followed a 74-year-old woman in to get her out. She didn’t fight anybody to get in,” she said in her Fox interview. “We seen police officers standing in that back hallway. They were standing and they were relaxed. They didn’t tell anybody to leave. They were talking and chatting with people.”
In a letter to Judge Royce Lamberth ahead of her sentencing, Morgan-Lloyd apologized for her crimes and disavowed the rioters who had attacked police officers and trashed the building, saying she “felt ashamed that something meant to show support for the President had turned violent.” She wrote that she was sorry, adding: “It was never my intent to help empower people to act violently.”
Lamberth said Morgan-Lloyd avoided jail time because she didn’t participate in the violence and condemned those who did. He issued a warning to other defendants that he’ll likely sentence them to jail time if they continue defending their behavior at the Capitol.
Lamberth also strongly denounced the insurrection, calling it “a serious crime” and a “disgrace” to the country. He pointed out that “much of the public remains outraged at what occurred.”
“This wasn’t a peaceful demonstration. … It wasn’t an accident that it turned violent,” the judge said.
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CNN’s Marshall Cohen, Katelyn Polantz, Hannah Rabinowitz and Sonnet Swire contributed to this report.
