Law & Crime reports..
An accused U.S. Capitol rioter known online as “Bullhorn Lady” has been ordered to explain why her pre-trial release shouldn’t be revoked after Law&Crime reported that she appeared to have been recorded in a bookstore wearing a mask with holes in it — in possible violation of court-ordered conditions for staying out of jail.
As Law&Crime discussed at length on April 9, a since-deleted video posted at the end of March on the Facebook page of Mr. Bookman’s — a used book store in Western Pennsylvania — showed an individual who appeared to be Rachel Powell wearing a mesh mask. The problem was that Powell, as a unique condition of her pretrial release, was ordered by Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell to “wear a mask whenever she leaves her residence.”
On Friday, Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Ronald Reagan appointee, said in crystal clear fashion that he felt the defendant’s actions mocked the earlier court order.
Lamberth began by noting that U.S. Probation & Pre-Trial Services filed a non-compliance report in Powell’s case on April 15. That report, the judge said, contained “an image” from the aforementioned video, “which shows defendant wearing a mask with holes in it large enough to see the defendant’s nose and mouth” (see the image above).
“When Pre-Trial Services called defendant to inquire about the video, defendant was evasive in answering the officer’s questions regarding the material of the mask,” court documents said.