Colorado Springs-area woman, known as “praying Grandma,” sentenced to one year of probation for role in Jan. 6 riot

A federal jury convicted Rebecca Lavrenz, of Falcon, on four misdemeanor counts for entering Capitol during insurrection

By Olivia Prentzel5:04 PM MDT on Aug 12, 2024

from The Colorado Sun

A Falcon woman convicted of breaching the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, during the riot to disrupt the results of the 2020 presidential election was sentenced Monday to one year of probation.

Rebecca Lavrenz, known as “J6 Praying Grandma” on social media, will also be required to pay a $103,000 fine and $500 in restitution, a spokesperson for the U.S. District Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., said. She was convicted of four misdemeanor counts for entering the Capitol and conducting disorderly conduct inside. 

In a Facebook post before the ruling, the 72-year-old great-grandmother, who operates a bed and breakfast northeast of Colorado Springs, offered no apologies for her crimes and said she felt the judge’s decision was in God’s hands.

“I am confident that his sentence will be what God, the Highest Judge, thinks is best to wake up our country,” Lavrenz wrote Monday morning. “Trusting and obeying God is my assignment for today.”

Lavrenz’s defense attorneys requested a one-year probation, no fine and no restitution, in court documents filed last week. They argued that she was a retired, first-time offender with “countless ties” to her community and commitments to her extended family.

Her attorneys said that Lavrenz’s conduct Jan. 6 was peaceful and nonviolent, that she caused no property damage and that she complied with the conditions of her release over the past two years after she was arrested in 2022, according to court documents. 

Federal prosecutors requested the judge order Lavrenz to serve 10 months in prison, followed by a year of supervised release and 60 hours of community service. The sentence was justified, prosecutors wrote in a letter to the judge filed last week, because Lavrenz has been “one of the loudest public voices calling the prosecution of January 6 riots a corrupt exercise.”

“Although Lavrenz certainly has a First Amendment right to publicly espouse her views, her unrepentant promotion of the riot is powerful evidence that she continues to pose a threat to future acts of political violence like that which engulfed the nation on January 6,” they continued. 

Prosecutors also asked the judge to impose a “substantial fine,” citing Lavrenz’s fundraising efforts after her trial. 

Lavrenz used her participation in the Jan. 6 riot and her convictions to raise more than $230,000 through online fundraising accounts and sought celebrity status based on her criminal conduct, prosecutors wrote. She also gave at least two dozen media interviews, where she continued her fundraising, questioned the fairness of her trial and showed no remorse for her criminal conduct. 

Her lawyers argued Lavrenz was not profiting from her crime and that all profits were going toward her legal defense, which have already exceeded six figures and her appeal will cost “additional tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars” over the next year, court documents said. 

Lavrenz was arrested Dec. 19, 2022, in Denver after tipsters alerted the FBI she was part of the crowd who breached the Capitol. She told federal authorities that she spent 10 minutes inside the Capitol, according to court documents. 

Investigators confirmed her account by reviewing surveillance footage that shows Lavrenz in a red scarf and white hat among the crowd of hundreds of rioters illegally entering and picketing inside the building. 

LKY: Her conviction on "conducting disorderly conduct inside" was for standing and PRAYING for 10 minutes!