Jan. 6 rioter Yvonne St Cyr likens herself to Jesus in sentencing: 'I did the right thing'
When Yvonne St Cyr was one of the first people to enter the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the Idaho woman said she thought it was her right to crawl through a broken Senate office window to stop Joe Biden from becoming president.
But as she was sentenced Wednesday to 2½ years in federal prison for her role in the riot, St Cyr said she understood what Jesus felt like when he accepted his fate before he was crucified. And she told the judge that she didn’t feel remorse for her actions.
“I did the right thing,” St Cyr said, according to NBC News. “I know it sounds delusional.”
St Cyr, 55, of Boise, was convicted in March on two felony counts of civil disorder and several misdemeanors. U.S. District Judge John Bates sentenced St Cyr to 30 months in prison and three years of supervised release. Prosecutors had recommended she serve 33 months in prison due to her history of criminal activity and her dishonorable discharge from the U.S. Marine Corps. She was also ordered to pay thousands of dollars in restitution and fines, including $2,000 to the Architect of the Capitol.
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After she was sentenced, St Cyr went on Facebook Live to complain about her future in prison. During the video, St Cyr did not take any responsibility for what she did at the Capitol and likened her alleged suffering to the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, where the Bible says Jesus experienced great anguish but accepted God’s will before he was betrayed, arrested and crucified.
“I understood what Jesus felt like when he was in the Garden of Gethsemane praying and felt so alone,” St Cyr said.
Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for D.C., said in court documents that St Cyr has never been accountable for her actions in the 32 months since the deadly riot.
“Her words show a lack of remorse, disrespect for the law, and disregard for the legal process,” Graves said in the sentencing memorandum.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacqueline Schesnol added that St Cyr “is a person who does what she wants, without care to rule, authority or the law.”
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Nicole Owens, St Cyr’s attorney, told The Washington Post that her client is “a deeply believing woman” who was experiencing “a misguided sense of patriotism and loyalty when she entered the Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
“She was exceptionally vulnerable to the messages surrounding the 2020 election due to her traumatic upbringing,” Owens said in a statement. “She believed former President Trump, and others in power, who told her the election had been stolen. She still does. Because of that belief — she felt she had a duty to act to save our country.”
More than 1,100 people have been charged in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the Capitol. Nearly 400 people have been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement, which is a felony, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C.
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St Cyr’s sentencing comes days after former Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison, the longest sentence yet among those convicted of disrupting the peaceful transfer of presidential power. The leader of the far-right group told The Post this week that prosecutors pushed him to implicate Donald Trump, the former president who is seeking to reclaim the White House in 2024 after being indicted in four cases. Trump has denied wrongdoing in each case.
St Cyr is a former Marine Corps drill instructor who was dishonorably discharged for a drug offense. She was arrested in December 2020 for trespassing after she would not leave Boise’s Central District Health building during a meeting about the pandemic and health measures taken to prevent the spread of covid-19, according to prosecutors.
Not long after her arrest in Boise, she traveled roughly 2,400 miles from there to Washington to attend the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021. After the rally, she joined a crowd of rioters who occupied the Lower West Plaza at the Capitol, prosecutors say. She was in the crowd that ultimately overwhelmed the police officers in that area, and was one of the first rioters to break through the fence line.
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“St Cyr entered the Tunnel twice and eventually climbed onto a ledge overlooking the crowd of rioters, which she filmed with her phone and shouted at the crowd, ‘We need fresh people’ and ‘Push, push, push,’” prosecutors wrote.
She climbed through a broken window and entered a senator’s hideaway room. While inside the Capitol, St Cyr live-streamed the chaos on Facebook and posted photos with the caption, “Patriots are in our house.”
St Cyr was found guilty of six charges on March 10. In addition to the felony charges, she was convicted of misdemeanor charges such as entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.
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St Cyr said in court that she went to Washington because she had taken an oath to defend the Constitution, repeatedly making the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump.
“She loves our country and Constitution and believes she was acting to save both when she went to the Capitol,” Owens told The Post.
Before she was sentenced, St Cyr went on a rambling and odd 45-minute rant in the courtroom that covered a series of unrelated topics. In that tirade, which she acknowledged was “a little all over the place and a little messy,” St Cyr said she wasn’t concerned about potentially going to prison.
“The spirit has assured me that isn’t going to happen,” she said.
Family members, including her husband Troy St Cyr, wrote letters of support.
“She harmed no one, didn’t break anything and caused no destruction or damage to another human being or any government property,” he wrote, according to KTVB, an NBC affiliate in Boise. “She had no intent to commit any crimes, much less the unconstitutional laws that you all have created to take our freedoms away.”
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Shortly after she was sentenced, St Cyr hopped on Facebook Live and said she had not filed taxes since 2019 and encouraged others to do the same. St Cyr said she would have to report to prison in about six weeks.
“So we’ve got six weeks for America to figure it out and stand up and get some truth, or I’m going to jail,” she said. “But that’s okay, because if I go to jail, I’m going to take a lot of information with me, and I’m going to teach a lot of women how to think and become free individuals.”
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