Rachel Powell, the Pennsylvania mother of eight charged in connection with the attack on the U.S. Capitol, is in hot water with a federal judge after wearing a “see-through mesh mask” to the bookstore where she worked in defiance of a judge’s order.
“Defendant’s decision to appear in a video wearing a mask with holes in it at work mocks compliance with the Court’s Order setting as a condition of pre-trial release that she ‘wear a mask whenever she leaves her residence,‘” U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth wrote in an order on Friday. “No reasonable person could think that defendant’s ‘mask’ complied with that condition, which Chief Judge Beryl Howell imposed to ensure that defendant ‘would not pose a risk to the health and safety of the community when she left her house.’”
The court, Lamberth wrote, “does not take defendant’s willingness to flout the Court’s Order lightly” and ordered Powell to “show cause in writing, no longer than ten (10) days from this date, why the Court should not revoke her pre-trial release, order her detained pending trial, or hold her in contempt.”
Online sleuths with Deep State Dogs, who identified Powell before her arrest, found the March 31 livestreamed Facebook video that featured Powell wearing her see-through mask.
Powell, an anti-mask advocate and Donald Trump supporter who smashed a window with a pipe during the Capitol insurrection, was identified in a New Yorker story before her arrest in early February.
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