County woman indicted in Capitol riot
Mar. 5—WASHINGTON, D.C. — A federal grand jury based in the District of Columbia handed down eight indictments Thursday against a Mercer County woman accused of breaking into the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot.
Rachel Powell, 40, of New Lebanon, is charged with obstruction of an official proceeding and aiding and abetting; destruction of government property; entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon; disorderly and destructive behavior in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon; engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon; disorderly conduct in a capitol building; and acts of physical violence in the capitol buildings or grounds.
Powell, identified as the "Bullhorn Lady" during the Jan. 6 riot, when former supporters of former President Donald J. Trump stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent Congress from ratifying electoral college results from the Nov. 3 election and officially declaring now-President Joe Biden as the winner.
She also participated locally last spring in protests against COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.
Powell was featured Feb. 2 in a New Yorker article, "A Pennsylvania Mother's Path to Insurrection," by Ronan Farrow, who outlined her activities in support of Trump. She told Farrow that she had been in the Capitol riot and acknowledged directing people inside the building with her eponymous bullhorn.
The article quoted her as saying, "Listen, if somebody doesn't help and direct people, then do more people die?"
In a criminal complaint filed by an FBI special agent, Powell is accused of using, with others, a pipe as a ramrod to break a Capitol window.
She was identified through her Facebook page and other social media as having been among the crowd that gathered outside the Capitol on Jan. 6 while the joint session of Congress was convening to certify the Electoral College vote. Shortly after 2 p.m., crowd members forced their way over police barriers and into the building by breaking windows, ramming open doors and assaulted 81 Capitol police officers and 58 members of the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department, the court documents say.
The FBI published an online poster Jan. 16 with photos of Powell, seeking information about her identity, the complaint states, and they obtained photos from her Facebook account. Authorities used Powell's Facebook account registration records to obtain her cell phone number and confirmed that her phone connected Jan. 6 to cell towers in Washington, D.C.
In the indictment issued Thursday, the grand jury said Powell broke a window, valued at more than $1,000, in the process of entering the Capitol, and carried offensive weapons, specifically an ice axe and a wooden pole, into a building where Vice President Michael Pence and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris were located.
Powell is further accused of performing at least one act of physical violence and disrupted a session of Congress.
