Minnesota woman pleads guilty to felony count in Jan. 6 case

WASHINGTON – A Minnesota woman pleaded guilty to one felony charge Thursday over her part in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Victoria Charity White, 41, from Rochester was part of the mob of then-President Donald Trump's supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol grounds and stopped lawmakers for hours from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election Trump lost.

White pleaded guilty to "civil disorder and aiding and abetting." Her federal public defender said White didn't have any comment when asked by the Star Tribune moments after leaving federal court in Washington D.C. Thursday afternoon. She is set to be sentenced in November.

Several different attorneys have represented White since her case began in 2021, with court filings showing that White terminated some of them through text message and that she rejected a plea offer in February. Ahead of the latest hearing, White posted on social media last week: "I took the plea NO going back this time. If you only knew what these 2yrs have been like."

Prosecutors alleged in an earlier court filing that after making her way from Minnesota to D.C., White on Jan. 6 "joined a group of individuals who marched to the Capitol, made her way onto restricted Capitol grounds, and pushed her way to the Lower West Terrace tunnel."

Prosecutors also alleged in the April filing that while White "shoved through the crowd, she assisted other rioters into the tunnel and cheered as they attacked the police officers inside."

"She continued to push forward, and shortly after 4:00 p.m., she made it to the front of the tunnel, where she was confronted by multiple police officers who pushed her back," prosecutors alleged.

White had been indicted earlier on four charges in the case, including the civil disorder count as well as for allegedly being in a restricted area along with a count involving "disorderly and disruptive conduct." She pleaded not guilty last year.

"The defendant entered far enough into the tunnel that she was pulled through by police officers, who placed her under arrest and handcuffed her," the prosecution wrote in the April court filing. "She was processed and released later that evening."

A September trial date had been scheduled for White's case before Thursday's plea news. A year ago, White responded to someone on Twitter and said, "I thought in America it's innocent until PROVEN guilty? I committed NO crime on January 6th."

White filed a civil lawsuit against the District of Columbia and local law enforcement in 2022, with her then-attorneys claiming in a filing that on Jan. 6 "she was severely beaten with a metal baton approximately 35 times and punched in face five times," by a police officer during the events of that day.

White later successfully asked the court to dismiss her civil case last year. An attorney for her wrote in a filing that White "does not have the time or resources to spend on her civil case until her criminal trial is resolved," but left open the option of re-filing later.

White has been outspoken on social media and has talked about Jan. 6 in interviews with conservative outlets. A previous defense attorney wrote in a February court filing that "White does not agree that J6 was an 'act of domestic terror,' 'a white supremacist attack,' or an 'insurrection' on her part." The attorney also claimed in the filing that White "was non-violent at the Capitol."