On Friday, August 30, I received an email from an entity known as Corrlnks. The email read, “This is a system generated message informing you that the above-named person is a federal person in custody who seeks to add you to his/her contact list for exchanging electronic messages.”
The above-named person is Sara Carpenter, a medically retired NYPD officer who in December had been sentenced to 22 months in prison and 24 months of supervised release for her innocuous role in the largely peaceful protest at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
I was sad to see this. Of the eight surviving women I profile in my book, Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6, Sara was the last one to be incarcerated. She left behind an adolescent son and a life in ruins. The month she spent at Ground Zero in September 2001 counted for naught in the DoJ’s cruel calculus.
To Attorney General Merrick Garland, Sara Carpenter was literally just a number. On August 25, Garland dismissed as a “quibble” whether the DoJ has had “1500 or slightly less than 1500” prosecutions so far. “I think that’s shown to everybody,” he added, “how seriously we take an effort to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power.”
No, what these prosecutions have shown is Garland’s sociopathic indifference to the human wreckage he has wrought. Two days after Garland’s boastful threat, I received an email from the daughter of Rebecca Lavrenz, a great-grandmother from Colorado Springs who walked into the Capitol through an open door and prayed for ten minutes and left of her own accord. Wrote Laura Lavrenz, “6 months of house arrest, beginning today.”
The home arrest comes with an ankle bracelet, a six month ban on using the internet for any purpose, the mandatory installation of government spyware on her phone and computer, and a $103,000 fine. For the record, this is a stiffer sentence than the ubiquitous provocateur Ray Epps received for, in his words, having “orchestrated” the riot.
This is a perversely stiffer sentence than protestors received for obstructing an official proceeding in September 2018, namely the Senate confirmation hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Days ago, I just happened on a video of then Senator Kamala Harris grilling Kavanaugh on some inane point.
NPR reported in a sympathetic piece, “Most of those charged this week with disorderly conduct, crowding or obstructing paid fines of $35 or $50.”
Lisa Eisenhart was charged with obstructing an official proceeding on January 6. As the court later acknowledged, Lisa “was not a member of any suspect group, did not do any advance planning, nor did she use force to enter the Capitol on January 6.” Her son Eric Munchel recorded their brief journey through the Capitol.
For a few minutes, the pair followed a group of rowdy young men whom Eric repeatedly cautioned, “Don’t vandalize anything, we aren’t Antifa,” and then, more forcefully, “You break shit. I break you.” The viewer sees what Lisa saw, and that was a total absence of violence and vandalism.
At one point, Lisa picked up a pile of zip-ties lying loose, and this act is what did her in. Said their prosecutor, “They stole the flexi-cuffs and carried them into the Senate gallery because they intended to take senators hostage, if possible.” Yes, without “advance planning,” an unarmed 57-year-old woman and her son were planning to take hostages. Seriously? A judge apparently thought so. He sentenced Lisa to 30 months in prison, followed by 36 months of supervised release.
None of the women I profiled resisted the police as aggressively as did the women at the Kavanaugh hearings. In fact, their inquisitors were at pains to document any resistance at all. Said the DoJ in its. sentencing document for Sara Carpenter, “During the confrontation, Carpenter slapped away the arm of an officer, who was trying to push her back, with her tambourine.” That was it.
Of the ten women profiled only one committed anything resembling a crime. Rachel Powell, 40, helped some men smash a makeshift battering ram through a Capitol window. When asked how she got swept up in the mayhem, Rachel answered, “I am completely in pain. I was hit with a baton, grabbed and thrown, sprayed. My whole body was on fire.” In October 2023, Rachel was sentenced to 57 months in prison and 36 months of supervised release.
The presence of women in the crowd seemed to provoke the police. Victoria White, 39, endured what was arguably the most severe police beating of a female ever captured on video. Stuck in a tunnel entrance from which she could not escape, Victoria was sprayed in the face with mace and beaten over the head with a baton at least twenty times.
Metropolitan D.C. police officer Lila Morris improvised when she saw Rosanne Boyland lying unconscious after having been pulled out from under a human pile. Morris picked up a stick lying nearby and swung it at Boyland’s head full force three times until the stick broke. All of this was captured on video. Boyland died soon after. And finally, of course, there was Ashli Babbitt, the unarmed 14-year Air Force veteran shot and killed without warning by Capitol Police Lieutenant (now Captain) Michael Byrd.
What Garland has presided over is the greatest mass injustice against American citizens since Japanese internment. Four protestors died, three by police action, and 1500 more had their lives ruined. Not a one of the accused was allowed a change of venue, and not a one was acquitted by D.C. juries no more committed to justice than those of Moscow circa 1937-39.
As Garland knows, the damage extends well beyond the 1500 to friends and relatives, employers and employees, parents and children. Rachel Powell, for instance, has eight children, Victoria White four. Lisa Eisenhart is a grandmother. Rebecca Lorenz, a great grandmother. As to Rosanne Borland and Ashli Babbitt, both in their mid-thirties, there will be no children.
The damage won’t end when that last J6er is sentenced. It will ripple down the ages for a generation, maybe more. The toll in human lives destroyed or distorted has already reached five figures. In time, it may reach six, but as, Merrick Garland cautions us, why quibble?
Jack Cashill’s new book, Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6, is available in all formats.
Image: Tyler Merbler
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