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Jan 6 rioter compares herself to Jesus as she is sentenced to 30 months in prison

Yvonne St Cyr still insists she ‘did the right thing’ when she stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021

Amelia Neath
Thursday 14 September 2023 13:29 BST
Enrique Tarrio's mom speaks out after his son's sentencing

A January 6 rioter has compared herself to Jesus after she was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for her involvement in the Capitol insurrection.

Yvonne St Cyr, 55, was sentenced on Wednesday to 30 months in jail, 36 months of supervised release, a $1,000 fine and $2,000 restitution to the Architect of the Capitol following her conviction on two felony counts of civil disorder and several misdemeanours.

After the sentence was handed down, she immediately took to Facebook to claim that she now knows how Jesus felt.

“I understood what Jesus felt like when he was in the garden of Gethsemane praying and felt so alone,” she said,  according to KTVB.

She then launched a Facebook Live where she stated that “the spirit” assured her that she was not going to go to prison – but that if she did, it would give her “plenty of time to write a book”.

“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.

In the meantime, she bizarrely advised her followers to “just keep watching Tucker [Carlson], keep spreading the truth, keep talking about the corruption, keep sharing, and we will bring the system down” – an apparent reference to fired Fox News host Tucker Carlson who now runs his own conspiracy-laden show on X (formerly known as Twitter).

The online diatribe comes after St Cyr also launched into a “bizarre 45-minute rant” during her sentencing hearing on Wednesday, according to CBS News.

Yvonne St Cyr has been sentenced to two and a half years for her involvement in the Capitol riots
Yvonne St Cyr has been sentenced to two and a half years for her involvement in the Capitol riots (Department of Justice)

In the rant, she claimed she had been on a spiritual journey and brought up her beliefs on the air we breathe, radio frequencies, her difficult upbringing and a woman she saw arrested on a playground in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

She also repeated the false claim that the presidential election was stolen – a false claim that ultimately led to the Capitol riot on 6 January 2021.

St Cyr previously served in the US military and told the court that she took an oath to defend the US Constitution.

She showed no remorse for her actions on the day of the Capitol riot, insisting: “I did the right thing. I know it sounds delusional.”

Yvonne St Cyr at the U.S. Capitol on 6 January 2021.
Yvonne St Cyr at the U.S. Capitol on 6 January 2021. (Department of Justice)

She was ultimately cut off by US District Judge John Bates, who then gave her the 30-month sentence.

St Cyr’s attorney Nicole Owens asked for leniency, saying that she was at the Capitol that day because of a “misguided sense of duty”.

But Assistant US Attorney Jacqueline Schesnol said St Cyr “is a person who does what she wants, without care to rule, authority or the law”.

This is not the first time the Capitol riots have been compared to the gestures of Jesus.

Back in February, attorney Joseph McBride, who has represented several rioters, took to X to say: “Jan-Sixers are being fed to the lions for sport in DC & the FBI is targeting practising Catholics, labelling us—extremists… Stand we must, nonetheless. Never forget, Jesus was killed for being an “extremist.””

Many other Capitol rioters have also been sentenced in recent weeks, such as former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was jailed for 22 years for seditious conspiracy.

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