From teaching history to making it: Why did these teachers become Capitol rioters on January 6?
It wasn’t just Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who stormed the Capitol in a violent insurrection one year ago. People from all corners of society including teachers and school staff also became rioters that day, writes Rachel Sharp
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox
Get our free Inside Washington email
In his sophomore year at Penn State University, Robert Morss gave an interview with the college paper about his plans for the future. He was studying to become a high school history teacher and said he especially dreamt of teaching American history because he believed “our nation’s founding is a beautiful time”.
A little over three years later, his dream came true when he graduated and landed a role as a substitute teacher for the Shaler Area School District in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, in December 2020.
But, just one month after that, Mr Morss became the subject of American history lessons himself.
The teacher, now 28, is accused of leading a violent mob who stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021, in what is now widely regarded as one of the darkest days in the nation’s history.
He allegedly assaulted police officers, directed other rioters in their attack on law enforcement and broke into what was supposed to be a safe room for lawmakers.
Last month, he was denied release from prison, with a federal judge describing him as “an ongoing danger to the community”.
Of the roughly 30 Capitol riot cases he has heard, US District Judge Trevor McFadden said the alleged actions by Mr Morss were among the most extreme.
A lesson in American history
The teacher was caught in multiple videos and images from the riot dressed in a tactical style vest, camouflage clothing and a MAGA hat armed with scissors, a tourniquet and what appeared to be a knife while he repeatedly tried to break through police lines to storm the Capitol building, according to charging documents.
At one point, he allegedly tried to rip a baton from a police officer, tried to take an officer’s protective helmet visor and tore away metal fencing that was holding the crowd back.
“This is our Capitol” and “we are going to take our Capitol back”, he is heard telling officers in video from the day.
Later, he allegedly used his military background to organise a mob of insurrectionists who were battling with law enforcement to breach the Capitol via a tunnel in the Lower West Terrace area.
During this violent attack, he allegedly took the lead, directing his fellow rioters to tear shields from police, create a shield wall and push against the officers in unison.
He was allegedly seen taking at least one riot shield from an officer himself and was heard shouting: “Make a shield wall! Organize right now and make a shield wall!”
At least one officer in the tunnel was “violently crushed” in the chaos and the police line was forced to retreat, prosecutors said.
Soon after, Mr Morss managed to invade the Capitol building by climbing through a broken window into a safe room.
Following his arrest, investigators recovered six firearms, a detailed plan to build a hometown militia and an unconstructed Lego set of the Capitol building.
He was arrested in June and is now charged with 53 counts including assaulting a police officer, aiding and abetting, engaging in physical violence in a restricted building and acts of physical violence.
If convicted at his trial in August, he faces decades in prison.
Mr Morss’s attorney previously said he was fired from his dream teaching job following his arrest.
The Shaler Area School District did not return The Independent’s request for comment by the time of publication.
It’s an image that couldn’t be further from the one his parents Angela and Andrew Morss painted of their son in court during hearings: the camo-clad rioter allegedly organising an invasion of the Capitol and assaulting police officers versus the affable teacher who closely bonded with his students.
Mr Morss’s parents have specifically pointed to their son’s love for his job as a teacher to argue that he is not a risk to anyone and should be released ahead of his trial.
“He was just in it 100%, and the kids loved it,” Ms Morss testified in July, as she described how he would dress up as historical figures to amuse the children he taught.
Questions have been raised how someone responsible for teaching future generations could have participated in the violent insurrection that left five people dead and more than 140 police officers injured.
But Mr Morss was far from alone.
The reality is that there were several teachers and educators involved in the riot that day.
“mrjoebidenhead”
Kenneth Reda was employed as a physical education teacher and as the defensive line coach for the school football team at Viera High School in Florida when he was captured on surveillance footage strolling through the Capitol rotunda on 6 January 2021.
The 54-year-old later bragged about being inside the Capitol on the far-right platform Parler, under his username “mrjoebidenhead”.
“I was there at the steps of the Capital I got into the capital building,” he wrote.
It turned out that Reda had also urged fellow Donald Trump supporters to “organize” and “flood DC” on 6 January to “overthrow this election” in a series of posts on his account, according to charging documents.
“We have got to get to DC on January 6th it is IMPERATIVE every single person that VOTED for Trump has to flood DC,” he wrote in one post on 19 December, the complaint reads.
In another post on 27 December, he wrote that “it is time to organize PATRIOTS we need to get together and organize against this KABAL we need to overthrow it....they have thrown their last ditch effort to overthrow this election therefore this nation if we do not come together and organize we will LOSE."
After federal investigators received a tip-off about the Parler posts, agents tracked him down to Viera High School and observed him on the school grounds.
They saw him exiting his vehicle in the school parking lot and entering the education institution.
He was arrested in July and charged with four counts of entering and remaining in a restricted building, disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building, disorderly or disruptive conduct on Capitol grounds and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.
Based on surveillance footage and cellphone data, Reda was inside the Capitol for around an hour.
He initially pleaded not guilty before agreeing to a plea deal in November to admit to the fourth count in exchange for the three other charges being dropped.
He is due to be sentenced on 9 February and faces up to six months in prison and a fine.
Following his arrest, Brevard County Public Schools placed Reda on leave and launched an investigation, before he resigned in August. Reda told the judge in December that he was seeking employment.
It is not clear if he is hoping to continue to work in education. Attempts by The Independent to reach him by phone were unsuccessful.
“First ones in”
Meanwhile, for Kelsey Leigh Ann Wilson, it was six months after she stormed the Capitol while draped in a Keep America Great Again flag that she took up a job as a first-grade teacher at a Christian elementary school in Missouri.
Wilson started working at the Dayspring Christian School in Springfield at the beginning of July 2021.
The following month she was arrested and charged for her part in the Capitol riot.
Wilson traveled to Washington DC with her husband Zach Wilson and a coworker on 6 January and the couple were among the mob filmed inside the Capitol.
It didn’t take long for investigators to come knocking on the couple’s door after a tipster alerted the FBI to a Facebook post by her husband just days after the insurrection.
In the post, Zach boasted about being the “first ones in” the Capitol building and entering House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office once inside.
“First ones in!!!! First thing we found was Pelosi’s office,” he bragged to another Facebook user who had asked if they were among the rioters that day.
Zach had tagged his wife in the post.
The couple initially lied to investigators, claiming they were only outside the Capitol but did not enter the building.
However, their story soon fell apart when the teacher’s colleague told investigators the couple had entered the Capitol for around 30 minutes.
According to prosecutors, Wilson’s colleague did not enter the Capitol building with the couple. The colleague was not named and it is not clear if they worked with Wilson at a school.
Surveillance footage also captured the couple inside the Capitol, walking along a hallway by Speaker Pelosi’s office and in the rotunda.
Like Reda, Wilson was charged with the same four counts before she and her husband also reached a plea deal in September, pleading guilty to just one misdemeanour count each.
It seems the 30-year-old knew her days as a teacher were numbered because of her participation in the riot.
Court documents detailed that “she is a first grade teacher and believes her employment will be terminated following her arrest”.
She was placed on administrative leave by Dayspring Christian School following her arrest. In September, an administrator confirmed to Kansas City Star that Wilson was “no longer employed” at the school.
The far right in the mainstream
To Kurt Braddock, professor of communication and faculty fellow of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Laboratory (PERIL) at American University, the participation of teachers in the violent insurrection simply shows the extent to which the far right has now filtered into all parts of the community.
“The Capitol riot shattered what people think the far right is,” he tells The Independent.
“People think they are neo-Nazis, white supremacists and the KKK but what was illustrated in living colour on TV a year ago is that the far right is also the people we trust in our community, including our teachers.
“And this isn’t unique to teachers - it is people from all walks of life, your next-door neighbours, your doctors, lawyers, everybody.
“Everyone you can think of was there that day - everyone from the standard of what we think of as the far right to people we wouldn’t like teachers.”
While members of far-right groups such as the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Three Percenters were among the rioters, they made up only a fraction of the people who turned out to riot based on the false belief that the election was stolen from Mr Trump, explains Mr Braddock.
“These groups are at the forefront but behind them are people like teachers who may not be as vocal or as visible but they do support what these groups stand for and they have been drawn into the conspiracies that these groups disseminate,” says Mr Braddock.
“The far right is not just groups outside of society. It’s now in all parts of society.”
There are two main reasons for this shift, he says: greater exposure to conspiracies through social media and the legitimisation of far-right beliefs by some politicians and public figures.
#Savethechildren
For people in professions like teaching, it’s possible their feelings of responsibility toward protecting children contributed to them being influenced by extremism in the lead-up to the Capitol riot, says Mr Braddock.
“Teachers are in a position of power and authority over those they educate and many feel they have a responsibility to be protectors of children,” he says.
“That’s something that was hijacked by the QAnon movement that there is a need to protect children from this invisible cabal and even though there is no evidence for it, this conspiracy can have a visceral effect on these people.”
Several rioters were seen sporting clothing bearing the letter “Q” on 6 January 2021 while one of the most notable participants went by the nickname the “QAnon Shaman”.
QAnon, a debunked conspiracy movement that claims Satan-worshiping politicians are running a global child sex trafficking ring and that there is a “deep state” plot against Mr Trump, also features heavily in court records and charging documents detailing what led some alleged rioters to join the insurrection that day.
Despite the FBI labeling QAnon a “dangerous extremist group” in 2019, the movement gained ground during Mr Trump’s last year in office as he refused to denounce it in public and his ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene openly supported it.
Mr Braddock says the conspiracy theory’s prominent role in the Capitol riot coupled with its ties to children and paedophilia could have played a part in why some teachers took part in the insurrection.
Anecdotally, he says he noticed the QAnon-linked hashtag #savethechildren being used by the likes of teachers and stay-at-home mothers in the lead-up to the Capitol riot.
“It was individuals who typically have a nurturing role or occupation,” he says.
“So I think it may have something to do with them seeing themselves as the protectors of children.”
In one now-infamous picture from the Capitol riot, a rioter was photographed at the front of the Senate chambers holding a sign that read: “The children cry out for justice.”
The woman, dressed in a red coat and leggings emblazoned with MAGA branding, is seen holding a cellphone up to another rioter who is sat in the seat of the vice president.
According to federal investigators the woman in the picture is Christine Priola: a 50-year-old who was working as an occupational therapist for students at the Cleveland Metropolitan School District in Ohio at the time.
It’s a role that saw her draw up special education plans for schoolchildren with disabilities.
Two days after the insurrection her house was raided by the FBI and she was charged with three federal counts of knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building, disorderly conduct, and unlawful activities on Capitol grounds.
When reporters knocked on her door following her arrest, someone inside stuck a sign reading “Save the children” in the window, reported News 5.
Ms Priola quit her job one day after the riot with her resignation letter also heavily alluding to QAnon.
“I will be switching paths to expose the global evil of human trafficking and pedophilia, including in our government agencies and children’s services agencies,” she wrote as one of her three listed reasons for her resignation.
Ms Priola had worked for the district on and off since August 2000.
When asked if there were any concerns about Ms Priola’s behaviour in schools ahead of the riot, a district spokesperson told The Independent that, since 2015, she had received ratings of “skilled”, the second-highest level in the district’s evaluation system.
Her personnel file, obtained by Cleveland.com, revealed Ms Priola had previously spoken of her passion for working with children.
“I have known for many years that I wanted to work with children and assist in their development,” she wrote to school officials in an undated memo.
“I understand that development in the critical years of childhood help form the foundation for healthy, safe and respectful lives.”
Online records show that her healthcare license was revoked in June.
As well as referencing QAnon beliefs, the former school therapist - whose case is pending - also pointed to other disputes playing out in schools across America in her resignation letter.
She wrote that she did not agree with union dues which she claimed “help fund people and groups that support the killing of unborn children” and that she would not be taking the Covid-19 vaccine “in order to return to in-person learning”.
While there was in fact no vaccine mandate in the state at the time, there’s no escaping the fact that pandemic-related restrictions are just one of several contentious issues within the nation’s schools today.
Microcosms of America’s divisiveness
Over the last couple of years, schools and school districts have become microcosms of divisiveness in the nation.
There has been outrage over mask policies and other measures as schools returned to in-person learning.
Parents and schools have gone to war over the teaching of critical race theory (CRT) to children.
There’s even been physical fights and arrests at school board meetings.
“All these different contentious issues have blended together in some way and schools and board meetings are now the new front of the ideological divide,” says Mr Braddock.
“The starting point was the criticism of CRT from the right so it doesn’t surprise me that it’s now bleeding into other areas and conspiracy beliefs which goes back to the far right talking points.”
Many schools have faced further divide in the aftermath of the Capitol riot around what the right course of action was when they learned a staff member was at the Capitol but was not known to have engaged in violence or criminal behaviour.
Rally-goer vs rioter?
Kristine Hostetter found herself at the centre of such a debate in San Clemente, California, when footage was posted online of her attending Mr Trump’s rally and then marching toward the Capitol on 6 January.
The popular fourth-grade teacher has not been charged with any crime and there is no evidence she entered the Capitol that day.
She was joined by her husband Alan Hostetter and two other members of the American Phoenix Project, all three of whom have been charged with multiple counts over allegations that they conspired with four members of the far-right Three Percenters militia group.
Mr Hostetter founded the American Phoenix Project to protest against Covid-19 restrictions but, after the 2020 election, it shifted to pushing the false claims the election was stolen, according to his indictment.
Prosecutors said the organisation then became “a platform to advocate violence against certain groups and individuals that supported the 2020 presidential election results” pointing to a video of Mr Hostetter saying that “some people at the highest levels need to be made an example of with an execution or two or three” if they weren’t willing to overturn the election results.
Ms Hostetter was listed as CFO of the American Phoenix Project in incorporation papers and was seen at events listening to her husband speak.
Her presence at Capitol Hill sparked uproar in the community and a student group launched a petition demanding the school district investigate her involvement in the day’s events and whether her views had impacted her teachings.
Others, meanwhile, came out in support of Ms Hostetter, launching a counter-petition while the president of the school district’s board of trustees argued that there had been no calls for an investigation over teachers who supported Black Lives Matter, the New York Times reported.
The district suspended first suspended Ms Hostetter before later reinstating her to her role.
Meanwhile, her husband has filed a motion to dismiss the charges against him claiming he is the target of a “classic FBI counterintelligence program operation” and that his former associates are government informants.
Ms Hostetter is just one of several teachers where, while they have not been criminally charged with wrongdoing, questions have been raised about a potential moral conflict between their jobs and their attendance at the Capitol.
In Wisconsin, Burlington High School teacher Jeff Taff was placed on leave for sharing his plans to travel to DC on 6 January with his students. He was later reinstated to his role following an investigation.
Over in Massachusetts, teacher Matt Lynch resigned from Braintree High School after a photo surfaced of him at the Capitol.
Mr Lynch, who told Patch.com he had been visited by FBI investigators in the aftermath of the riot, then won a seat on the Braintree School Committee in November.
Neither Mr Lynch nor Mr Taff have been charged or accused of wrongdoing.
Mr Braddock says it’s critical to distinguish between the educators who may believe conspiracies around the election but protested peacefully on Capitol Hill on 6 January and those who turned violent and stormed the building.
“People are thinking about all those on Capitol Hill as a monolithic thing,” he says.
“Those who broke into the Capitol were domestic terrorists. But those who held signs and didn’t go into the building and didn’t attack the police or engage in violence - while they may have ideas contrary to your own - they were [exercising their] First Amendment rights.
“A distinction needs to be made and if they can carry out their teaching duties without teaching the disinformation then that’s fine.”
However, there are undoubtedly concerns if people are teaching children conspiracies that have been proven wrong, he says.
“If some teachers do believe the election was stolen and that is born out in their lessons that is very concerning as it could provide impressionable young minds with the idea that future elections are not valid and that violence is justified,” he says.
“Teachers are very influential and are in trusted positions of power.”
Teaching 6 January 2021
One year on from the riot, schools and educators are now faced with the prospect of teaching children what happened on 6 January 2021.
If the teachers were present in DC that day this could even be beneficial to educating future generations about the day, says Mr Braddock.
“There’s no need to try to clean up and sanitise what happened,” he says. “We need to be truthful with students.”
Most importantly, he says, Americans need to learn that what they once believed extremism and the far right looked like is no longer the case.
“This is a teachable moment. The lesson here is that anyone from any walk of life can be persuaded by disinformation - it doesn’t mean they’re bad people, it means they can be exploited,” he says.
“We need to shift our thinking on who is susceptible to radicalisation from the far right.
“January 6 was an ugly, ugly day but it showed a lot about what’s going on in our communities and we can’t hide our eyes any longer.”
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies