WASHINGTON (CN) — Five more individuals pleaded guilty Tuesday to storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 but will likely avoid jail time as there is no evidence they committed violence.
As a federal judge noted on Tuesday, the defendants belong to a group of low-level, nonviolent rioters who tend not to have a criminal past — and their conduct on Jan. 6 is a surprising anomaly.
“That’s one of the largest questions in these cases,” U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said at a hearing for Dawn Bancroft. “So many people, up to Jan. 6, were upstanding members of the community and had never been in trouble. Scores of letters from family members and friends have come in attesting to their character. But, on Jan. 6, they morphed into terrorists.”
Bancroft, who owns a CrossFit affiliate in Pennsylvania, told Sullivan that she wanted to accept responsibility for what she did on Jan. 6. She entered into a misdemeanor plea agreement for parading, picketing or demonstrating in the Capitol — a plea deal that government prosecutors have been handing out to many nonviolent offenders.
“I understand what I did was not right,” Bancroft told Sullivan. “I feel like there are consequences for my actions, and that is something that I would teach my children, I gotta accept the consequences for what I did.”
CrossFit terminated its affiliation with Bancroft after her arrest.






