A Texas real estate agent who vowed she would not do any jail time after she entered the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack on Congress was sentenced to 60 days in prison Thursday, court records show.
Jenna Ryan admitted to entering the Capitol after a pro-Trump mob attacked it that day, but her attorney argued that she did not incite any violence or damage any property, and was only briefly in the building.
She pleaded guilty on Aug. 19 to one count of parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building, a misdemeanor.
Two months after her arrest, Ryan tweeted, "Definitely not going to jail. Sorry I have blonde hair white skin a great job a great future and I'm not going to jail" and "I did nothing wrong" — which prosecutors cited in arguing for jail time.
Ryan, in a letter to the court, said the tweet in question was in response to "bullies" who attacked her looks on social media.
"I responded back apologizing for my blonde hair but that I wasn’t getting prison," she wrote. "I wasn’t saying I was above prison, I just felt that it would be unlikely."
A request for comment from her attorney was not returned Thursday night, and an attempt to find a phone number for Ryan, who is free on bond, was not immediately successful. Online court records did not appear to show when her prison term will begin.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper reportedly told Ryan when handing down the sentence that she has become "one of the faces of January 6."
The judge said the sentence should send a message "that we take it seriously, that it was an assault on our democracy . . . and that it should never happen again," according to The Washington Post.
The misdemeanor count carries up to six months in prison, and prosecutors recommended a sentence of 60 days.
Ryan has been outspoken in interviews about having no regrets.
Prosecutors said she participated in and was "cheerleading" a violent attack on Congress to stop the counting of electoral votes, and which threatened the peaceful transfer of power.
Ryan claimed that she did not see any violence and was only briefly inside the building. But prosecutors argued that she went to the Capitol after boasting about seeing people "climbing the walls" on television and saying "we’re gonna go down there and move them out of their chairs."
Prosecutors responded that no reasonable person could interpret that as anything but involving the use of force.
