Woman who said she hoped to shoot Pelosi on Jan. 6 pleads guilty to misdemeanor

A woman who said she had hoped to shoot Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “in the friggin’ brain” during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol this week pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor charge in connection with the riot.

Dawn Bancroft on Tuesday pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, according to WUSA 9. She is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 25.

Bancroft was arrested with her friend Diana Santos-Smith in January. Both women had faced four charges in connection with the riot, including entering and remaining in a restricted building and disorderly conduct.

During the hearing, District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan questioned the Justice Department on why they had not sought to charge Bancroft with threatening a U.S. official, according to The Washington Post.

Sullivan added that Bancroft’s “outrageous statement” would come up again at sentencing and asked her to think about how “good people who never got into trouble with the law … morphed into terrorists” on Jan. 6, the Post reported.

According to court documents, Bancroft took a video as she and Santos-Smith were leaving the Capitol after they had entered through a broken window.

“We broke into the Capitol. … We got inside. We did our part,” Bancroft said in the video. 

“We were looking for Nancy to shoot her in the friggin’ brain, but we didn’t find her,” Bancroft said, which an FBI affidavit believed was referring to Pelosi.

Santos-Smith also pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charge of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, WUSA 9 noted, and is also scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 25. 

More than 600 people have been charged in connection with the riot that disrupted the certification of the 2020 election.

Earlier this month, Cleveland Meredith Jr. pleaded guilty to one count of interstate communication of threats for sending a text message to a friend threatening to shoot Pelosi in the head on live TV.